


Overwatch

by cfcureton



Category: Arrow (TV 2012), Arrow - Fandom, olicity - Fandom
Genre: AU, Alternate Universe - No Green Arrow (Arrow TV 2012), Alternate Universe - No Lian Yu Island, F/M, Mayor Oliver Queen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-21
Updated: 2019-04-19
Packaged: 2019-10-14 03:24:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 43,593
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17500640
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cfcureton/pseuds/cfcureton
Summary: A burglary attempt convinces the Mayor of Starling City to hire Smoak Technologies to strengthen his security. But between the sassy AI watching him 24/7 and the personal trainer with his own reasons to kill him, Oliver may wish he’d stuck with his baseball bat for protection.





	1. Chapter 1

Something woke Oliver Queen. He couldn’t say what, exactly, but one minute he was asleep and the next he was wide awake, staring into the darkness. His ears strained to pick up any sound out of the ordinary, but the sudden pounding of his heart made that kind of impossible. Long, agonizing seconds passed as he questioned whether or not to get up and investigate. 

He’d just decided it had been his imagination when he did hear a sound: The scrape of chair legs on the floor. Not a long sound, as if it was being pulled across the room, a short squeak, like someone running into it in the dark. 

Oliver sat straight up in bed and swung one leg out onto the floor, his hands on the bed covers in preparation to fling them off. His personal security didn’t live in his residence but they had the key, and he wasn’t inclined to jump-scare one of his armed bodyguards in the middle of the night. 

Curiosity finally got the better of him; he stood and strode to the bedroom door, blowing out a quick fortifying breath before grasping and turning the handle. 

There was no one in the hall, no lights on, no other sounds. He edged down the hallway to the living area, still debating whether to make lots of noise or as little as possible. The dancing beam of a flashlight bouncing along the walls ahead of him made his heart stop. 

Somebody was definitely in his apartment. 

He pressed his back against the wall and peeked around the corner into the main living area: The owner of the flashlight was a black-clad figure at the far side of the room, facing away from him. The figure—a man? Probably—was busy trying to break into an antique curio cabinet holding the bits and pieces of his life: Some family heirlooms, souvenirs from his travels around the globe, and a couple of remembrances only worth something to him. 

The thought of losing any of it to this asshole suddenly filled him with rage. Oliver slipped back down the hall to his bedroom and, as quietly as possible, retrieved his childhood baseball bat propped against the wall at the back of his closet. So much for your big brother being a pack rat, Thea Queen, he thought grimly. He tested his grip as he crept back down the hall. 

Another glance around the corner showed him the thief had one hand on the flashlight and the other on the trinket he’d just pulled out of the cabinet. No hands free to hold a weapon, then. Oliver let one hand slide around the corner of the wall til he found the light switch, then flicked it on with a blood-curdling yell. 

The thief dropped the item—and the flashlight—and dived for the front door so Oliver lunged after him, although it occurred to him that his plan was not well fleshed out beyond Yell and Threaten. At the last second he realized this could be part of a team of burglars and he slowed momentarily to turn his head and check down the other hallway, just in case. 

By the time he’d made it out the door into the hallway the thief was gone. 

Oliver was alone. 

———————————————————————

The police were just wrapping up their investigation when the small blonde in the very high heels slipped through the front door of his apartment. 

“Um, hello?”

Oliver stepped forward so she would know who exactly to address. 

“Hi. Are you with the insurance company?”

She shook her head quickly, making her ponytail dance. “No, I got a call this morning from your office asking for a security expert. I’m—“

“Felicity Smoak?” He took another step and held out a hand. “Hi, I’m Oliver Queen.”

She shook firmly, but with a slightly perplexed—maybe nervous—look. “I know who you are. You’re the Mayor.” As soon as the words came out of her mouth she pressed her lips together in embarrassment. 

“Ah, yeah. I am. Thanks for coming.” Oliver stuffed both hands into his pockets and watched Felicity survey the living room. 

“They steal anything?”

She began a slow circuit of the room, looking everything over without touching. 

“Um, no. Apparently I scared him off before he had a chance.”

Her head swiveled to him for a moment as she circled the perimeter. “You had a gun?”

Oliver shook his head. “Baseball bat.”

Felicity flashed him a grin. “Nice. I hate guns.”

“I thought you’d be pro-gun. Isn’t security your job?” His brow furrowed in confusion.

She nodded as she stopped in front of the curio cabinet. The doors were still open from the police investigation and her hand lifted as if she wanted to touch something. 

“The best security isn’t necessarily violent, Mr Queen.”

“Oliver,” he amended, “please.”

She flicked a glance over her shoulder at him and then focused on the contents of the cabinet. 

“Is that a piece of the Berlin Wall?”

She meant the small chunk of concrete, about the size of a doorstop, partially covered in spray paint. Oliver focused on the floor, suddenly shy but also pleased. 

“Yeah. My dad was in Berlin shortly after it fell. He brought that back as a souvenir.”

Felicity nodded without turning around. “My mom has a little piece. About this big.” She held up one fist. “Who knows if it’s the real thing, although she swears it came with a certificate of authenticity.”

She chuckled at the end and Oliver huffed a little laugh in return. 

“Well,” she segued, spinning on a heel to face him across the room, “I just need to do a walk around assessment, ask a few questions, and then I’ll put a security plan together that will supplement what the city already provides. Sound good?”

“Absolutely. Let’s get started.” Oliver nodded and motioned for her to proceed. 

He was glad he’d thrown the covers up over the bed because that was the first place she went, making some kind of notes on her tablet as she surveyed the more private spaces of his home. It felt like she was reading his mind when she glanced up and explained she was making note of all the windows and doors throughout the apartment. 

He led her back across the living room to the other hallway and the two bedrooms and bath there. 

“This is William’s room. My son,” he added. Felicity looked up at him. 

“Oh. It must’ve been terrifying to have your family at home as this was happening.”

“No. I mean yes, it would’ve been. But William was at a sleepover, luckily.” 

“And...Mrs Queen?” Her head bent to her tablet; Oliver felt his own head tilt in curiosity. 

“Mrs Queen was my mother.” He couldn’t contain his grin when her head snapped up to his. “William’s mother and I were never together,” he continued gently. “It’s just the two of us.”

Felicity nodded once. 

When the tour ended they went back to the living room and she excused herself to work up some calculations at one end of the couch. Oliver settled onto the other end and checked his work emails, but he caught himself stealing glances at the security expert. It felt nice, having someone else share his space in companionable silence. A grown up someone else, he corrected immediately with a faint smile. 

“Okay,” she said after a few minutes, Oliver’s signal to stash his phone and shift to her end of the couch. Felicity held the tablet out so they could both see it. “Based on the size of your apartment, a standard alarm system would be very effective. However—“ Oliver refrained from rolling his eyes, because here came the upsell—“because you already have layers of security—your personal guards, the building’s security, and City Hall’s—you really need a system that can interact seamlessly with all those elements.”

She had placed the tablet on her knee to thread her fingers together in illustration, and when it bobbled unexpectedly he reached out to steady it. 

“Thanks,” she said under her breath; it was obvious they both knew the tips of his fingers were now brushing her leg. They both pretended it wasn’t happening. 

“So, do you have a solution to this problem?”

Felicity retrieved the tablet from him and tapped the screen. “As a matter of fact, I do. This is Overwatch.” A fancy spinning logo appeared on the screen.

“I see.” He didn’t, obviously. “How does it work?”

“I install her inside your apartment and she’ll interface with you, your security, the building mechanicals, and the Mayor’s office to keep you monitored and safe 24 hours a day.”

“Her?”

Felicity blushed. “Or him. Whichever you prefer.”

“What do you mean by ‘interface’?” 

“She’ll speak to you just like a Siri or Alexa can.”

Oliver blew out a breath and shook his head slightly. “I don’t know. I’ve never had much luck with those kinds of things.” He lifted his shoulders in a shrug when she quirked an eyebrow at him. “We don’t...get along.”

Felicity smirked and tapped a button marked ‘DEMO’. A flair of green light lit up the screen.

“Good morning, Mr Queen.”

Oliver’s eyes shifted to Felicity and back to the screen a couple of times. “How did she...?”

“Know your name?” Felicity grinned. “She saw it on the client profile before I ever stepped through your door.”

“Was that...your voice?” 

She blushed prettily. “I needed a voice for the prototype. It kind of stuck. We’ve hired a voice actor to make a male version, though, in case you’d rather have that.”

“No no,” Oliver cleared his throat and waved her off. “She’s fine.”

Felicity swiped through a few Power Point slides explaining the basics of the system—mostly Greek to Oliver—and outlining the mission of Smoak Technologies. He could tell by her delivery Felicity was passionate about her product, but inexperienced selling it. 

“What exactly would it—sorry, SHE—what exactly would she do? On a daily basis, I mean.”

Felicity sat up straighter, clearly more comfortable talking about the hows than the whys of her company. 

“Well, first she would monitor every living thing coming into this building. You would set who was welcome—or not—inside your apartment, and Overwatch would use facial recognition and biometrics to confirm this. Besides perimeter alarms that you would arm when you were away, or at night, she could also remotely track you—and your son—throughout the day. If you feared kidnapping, for instance. She would have a direct link to your office in City Hall, and to Starling City police headquarters. If she sensed a threat she could have emergency services here within minutes without even tripping an alarm.”

“Huh.” Oliver rubbed his palms across his thighs, impressed. “Would I, uh, give her my shopping list?” He grinned bashfully at the end to let her know he really was not up to speed with all this technology, but whether or not Felicity caught on to his self-deprecating humor she nodded vigorously anyway.

“Absolutely. Overwatch can take down dictated lists, notes, meeting minutes, or just record conversations you might want to reference later. It’s actually good for her to know what items you order and have delivered here, so she knows if a suspicious package arrives.”

Oliver sighed and gazed out his living room window at the cityscape. “This all feels a bit like overkill for the mayor of a mid-size city. Not to mention invasive to the other tenants in the building.”

“Oliver, I know it seems like a lot, but you have to remember two things: One, you’re not just the mayor, you come from a family with a great deal of money. You are constantly at risk from crime, large and small. Two, I don’t know if the police told you this, but the burglar was not spotted coming in to the building on any of the security cameras, nor did they catch anyone leaving after you scared him off, which means—“

“He could live in the building? Jesus.”

Felicity nodded. “Or is holed up with someone who does until this blows over.”

Oliver pulled his lips in and worried them with his teeth while he thought everything over. 

“Okay,” he said finally. “Let’s give it a try.”

Felicity’s smile lit up the room as she tapped through to the end of the contract and pointed out the signature line. “Excellent! I’ll let my partner know. We can have everything ready to install...Monday morning?”

“Sounds...good. Um, wait. Partner?”

She was already standing, eager to get started, but she turned and nodded once decisively. 

“Yes. John Diggle. The personal trainer?”

Oliver’s stomach dropped. There were Diggle Fitness Centers all over Starling City. The guy’s handsome face and massive upper body graced the sides of half a dozen city buses.

And he hated Oliver Queen.

“He, um, installs computer equipment?”

Felicity looked amused. “No. He’s going to teach you self defense.” She smiled proudly. “It’s part of the Overwatch package.”


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Wow! Thanks for the enthusiastic response to the first chapter! It makes it a joy to work on. :)
> 
> I thought I had a handle on all the elements of this story, but then the doorbell rang and...well, you’ll see.

Felicity Smoak arrived bright and early Monday morning just as William was heading out the door for school. She had a cheerful smile and a hello for him; he had a vague grunt for the anonymous grown-up blocking his way out the door. 

“William,” Oliver hissed to his son’s retreating back. He received no acknowledgment in return. “Sorry about that. Come in.”

“No worries. He’s busy psyching himself up for the school day, no doubt.” Felicity was sunny and upbeat in black jeans and a pink sweater. No heels today, he noticed, just flat shoes with little—were those bears?—on the toes. She had a giant computer bag slung across her body and was pulling a large plastic box on wheels behind her. 

“Can I take...something?” Oliver felt bad standing there while she hauled her things through the door, but she waved him off with a grin. 

“All set.” She tipped the box upright onto its bottom and lifted the bag over her head. “Ready for your state-of-the-art security system?”

Oliver blew out a breath. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”

Felicity turned away to begin opening the plastic box. “You’ll love her. Anyway, you know what they say—“ she looked back over her shoulder at him—“Once you go Overwatch you never go back.”

They blinked at each other a second and then her nose scrunched adorably. 

“They don’t say that, do they.”

“Not to my knowledge, no. But they should,” he added hastily before her face could turn any more pink.

“This will take most of the day, I’m afraid, and some of it will be noisy, so feel free to go to work or wherever you need to be. I won’t need you physically here until she’s fully installed.”

“I arranged my schedule to work from home today actually. If I go in now I risk someone getting excited and calling a meeting.”

She grinned acknowledgement and Oliver felt the corners of his mouth lift in response. He crossed his arms over his chest as he watched her work. 

“What did you mean by needing me ‘physically’?” God, it sounded pervy coming out of his mouth. “Here,” he added after a cringe-worthy pause. “Needing me here.”

“She’ll need a record of your voice, so she knows who to listen to. But also, if Overwatch is going to...over watch you, she’ll need a baseline of your vitals. Heart rate, blood pressure, etcetera. For William too. The whole thing takes about 90 minutes.”

“It takes 90 minutes to monitor my heart rate?” Oliver’s eyebrows contracted in astonishment.

“Sure. We’ll start with your resting heart rate, but then we’ll need to put you through some light, moderate, and vigorous exercise so she can tell the difference between you recovering from a sprint and, say, having a heart attack.”

Oliver nodded in understanding. He hadn’t expected to break out the gym shorts today, but whatever. 

“John will be over late this afternoon to run the tests,” she added. “You know, put you through your paces.” She jogged in place and pumped her arms a couple of times with a silly grin. It would’ve been cute if Oliver hadn’t suddenly broken into a cold sweat. In all the commotion this morning he’d kind of forgotten about his impending encounter with John Diggle.

“About, uh, John and all that,” he began, uncrossing his arms and smoothing his eyebrows with his fingers, “I don’t know if—“

The doorbell chimed and Felicity held up a finger to cut him off. “Hold that thought. I think my contractor is here.”

“Con...contractor?” Any further questions—or protests—of Oliver’s were lost amidst the conversation between Felicity and the two men at his door. Their tool belts announced that they were clearly construction workers; apparently it took both a carpenter and an electrician to complete the install. 

Oliver vowed to spend some of his morning reading the damn contract he’d signed. 

—————————————————————-

By late morning the carpenter had finished turning his walls to Swiss cheese and the electrician was busy installing cameras in every room under Felicity’s direction. There were a lot of cameras going in. Like, A LOT. Oliver had been through the contract three times and had, unfortunately, found all the places he’d initialed—under the influence of a blonde ponytail and cuteness, clearly—to give permission for all of this. 

He looked up from his morning work spread out on the coffee table to watch Felicity pass through the living room with her ever-present tablet in the crook of her arm and an alarming thought occurred to him. He cleared his throat as she went by.

“Um, hey.”

“Hi there. Sorry, are we being too loud?”

“Oh, um no. It’s fine. I just...” His voice left him momentarily and he glanced away, suddenly painfully shy. Felicity leaned in expectantly. 

“Are the cameras going...everywhere?” He spread his hands in hopes of illustrating his point without having to say it and watched Felicity’s brow knit in confusion. He finally tipped his head toward the hallway leading to his bedroom and her mouth made a little “Oh” shape. 

“Oh, I see. Bedrooms, yes. Bathrooms will have thermal imaging, but no cameras.” She took a step closer and leaned in conspiratorially. “The bedroom cameras are the only ones you can tell her to turn off, briefly. For, you know, privacy.” She waggled her eyebrows and Oliver had to clamp his lips together to keep a laugh of hysteria from escaping. 

When he didn’t reply she took that as an end to their conversation and moved on. Oliver slowly sat back onto the couch and imagined bringing a date home and calmly asking his AI to stop recording in his bedroom long enough to get the deed done. God. 

He scrubbed a hand up over his face just as his doorbell rang. Felicity’s head popped out from the hallway to William’s room. 

“Want me to get that?”

He waved her off politely and did it himself, thank god, because if Tommy Merlyn had met her at the front door alone there was no telling what he might’ve said to her. 

“Mornin’, Champ!” He slapped a bag of—presumably—donuts against Oliver’s chest and pushed through the door without waiting for an invitation. He had a drink carrier holding two coffees in the other hand. 

“What, no lunch?” Oliver didn’t reach for the donut bag fast enough and ended up juggling it when Tommy let go of it on his way past. 

“Holy shit, what happened in here?” He pivoted slowly, surveying all the holes in the drywall and the miles of wiring strung around the apartment. 

Felicity stuck her head out from William’s hallway again looking puzzled. 

“Did you say something, Oliver?” 

Oliver watched his best friend’s face slide into a charming grin at the sight of her and sighed internally. Here we go. 

Tommy extracted one of the coffees from the carrier—the one meant for Oliver, clearly—and brandished it with a bow at the waist that would’ve been ridiculous on anyone else. Oliver frowned when Felicity blushed and accepted it with a giggle. 

“Ooo, caramel macchiato, my favorite. How did you know?”

“You’re lucky I never bring him what he orders, otherwise you’d be getting it black. Tommy Merlyn, at your service.”

Oliver rolled his eyes but neither of them were looking. 

“Felicity. Smoak. Nice to meet you.”

“Tommy was just leaving,” Oliver heard himself say as he hooked an arm around his best friend’s shoulders and steered him toward the front door. 

“What? Nonsense. If you’re taking a personal day, I’m taking a personal day. Them’s the rules.” Tommy grinned wickedly so only Oliver could see. 

“I’m working from home today, which means you need to go.” Seriously? What was it going to take with this guy? 

An hour later Oliver was still trying to figure that out. Tommy had taken over the other end of his couch, shoes off and feet up on the coffee table. Oliver snatched after a packet of papers trapped under his friend’s heels with a growl. 

“I have a conference call in ten minutes,” he reminded him with a frown.

“And I told you I will mute the tv when that happens.” Tommy popped another baby carrot into his mouth and crunched thoughtfully. “We need to think about lunch. Hey Felicity! Wanna go to Table Salt?”

Oliver lowered the papers in his hands and threw Tommy a look that he pretended not to see.

Felicity, seated at the kitchen table across the room, lifted her head from her laptop with wide eyes. “Um, thanks, but this is going to take all day. I wasn’t planning on stopping for lunch.”

“What?!” Tommy was up off the couch in one motion, scooping up his phone and stepping into his shoes simultaneously. “This will never do, young lady.” He swept an arm back to Oliver and pointed at him. “The usual? Blackened Salmon?”

“Tommy...”

“What do you like, Ms Smoak? You know what, never mind, I’ll get one of everything. Back in thirty.”

The door slammed behind Tommy and suddenly it was quiet. Felicity’s mouth was hanging open in disbelief. 

“Is he for real?”

Oliver rolled his eyes but couldn’t find words for everything Tommy was.

“Hey, I’m about to fire her up. You wanna see?”

She carried the laptop over to the couch and sat next to him, and suddenly Oliver was glad Tommy was on a quest for food. He rubbed his hands together nervously as he watched her type in a string of commands and press Enter. 

“Here we go,” she said under her breath. The same flash of green light from the Demo appeared.

“Good morning, Mr Queen. Felicity.”

Felicity grinned at Oliver as he sat momentarily speechless.

“Say hello,” she whispered to prompt him. Oliver cleared his throat and leaned forward.

“Um, HELLO.”

Felicity giggled. “You don’t have to yell.”

“What should I...call her?”

“Technically she’s just called Overwatch, but you can give her a name if you want.”

A panicked look passed over his face and she patted his knee reassuringly. 

“You can think about it. Overwatch, show me every interior camera currently on line.” The screen immediately filled with interior shots of Oliver’s bedroom, the hallway, and one corner of the living room; he and Felicity could clearly be seen sitting on the couch hunched over the laptop. She looked up and waved at the camera and he huffed a laugh. 

“Overwatch, show the building cameras currently on line.”

“Interfacing with building security,” the computer replied in Felicity’s voice. Oliver glanced at her and wrinkled his nose. “Is that weird? Hearing yourself?”

She shrugged. “It doesn’t sound like me to me, you know?” Oliver nodded, but their attention was taken by six new camera shots of the building’s lobby and all exterior doors. 

“Sweet,” she whispered under her breath. 

Oliver’s phone began to ring and he suddenly remembered his conference call. Dammit. This was just getting fun. Felicity pantomimed moving back to the kitchen and tiptoed away so he could take the call. 

—————————————————————-

Tommy had hardly been exaggerating about buying one of everything: Oliver kept his mouth shut by sheer force of will and watched him unpack two bags of food in to-go containers. 

“Something from every food group, just to cover my bases,” Tommy explained with a grin. “We can cut it all up and share it, like a sampler platter.”

Oliver showed him what he thought of THAT idea by snagging his container of salmon and heading for the couch. He ate in silence, stealing glances at the kitchen and the light and easy banter between Tommy and Felicity as they filled the table with opened containers and sampled some of everything. The electrician even took a break and helped himself at Felicity’s insistence, and soon Oliver felt like the only person not invited to his own party. 

She excused herself first, pointing out how much work still needed to be done, and disappeared with the electrician to continue installing cameras. Tommy’s eyes were wide when Oliver passed by on his way to rinse out his lunch container.

“Dude,” he breathed at Oliver’s shoulder. “She’s amazing. How did this happen?”

“How did what happen?”

“Beautiful blonde? Security system?”

“I told you. Somebody broke in Friday night.”

“Yeah yeah, sure. But, beautiful blonde IT girl?”

Oliver leveled a sobering look at him. “John Diggle is her business partner. He’ll be here later today.”

“Duuuude.” Tommy’s eyes went wide for a completely different reason and Oliver nodded his agreement grimly. 

The two worked together silently to clean up the leftovers and toss them in the fridge, then Tommy dried his hands on his jeans and cleared his throat. 

“Well, I’ve done all the damage I could here today,” he announced as Felicity passed by with her head bent to her tablet. “Ms Smoak, lovely to meet you. Oliver, lovely to have known you.” He clapped a hand onto Oliver’s shoulder and squeezed. “I’ll teach Will about girls, don’t you worry.” 

The last was delivered in a stage whisper that made Oliver wince and Felicity blink in confusion. Within seconds Tommy Merlyn had disappeared.

“Is he...?”

“Always like this? Unfortunately, yes.”

“What did he mean by ‘lovely to have known you’?”

Oliver sighed and smoothed his fingers across his brow. “Felicity, about John Diggle—“

She jumped as her phone buzzed in her back pocket and extracted it with an apologetic look. Then her eyes lit up. 

“Speaking of...Hey John! We were just talking about you.”

Oliver watched Felicity’s face as she listened to whatever John was saying. Maybe he was telling her about their past, he thought for a second, about the horrible things Oliver had done to him. But no, it was something briefer than that, because the little wrinkle of concentration was already smoothing itself out on Felicity’s forehead, and her mouth was opening to reply. 

He was just starting to breathe normally again when Felicity raised a finger to ask him to wait and let herself out the front door to continue the conversation in the hallway. Oh shit. 

His own ringing phone was a blessed distraction, and by the time he’d fielded the work call and followed up with some research and a reply email she was back in the apartment hunched over her laptop, working. Oliver started to open his mouth to ask if everything was okay with John but found he couldn’t do it. If it was bad news he didn’t want to know. Not yet. 

————————————————————-

William was due home just before four, and by then Felicity had synced Oliver’s phone and laptop with Overwatch and they’d spent a good deal of time side by side on the couch customizing features. 

“Again,” Felicity was saying as William entered the apartment, “you can adjust any of these particular settings once you’ve lived with her a few days and figured out what works best for you, keeping in mind that she is constantly learning and adapting to you too.” Felicity’s smile for him was so warm and genuine Oliver felt his temperature rise. “She’s here to make your life better.”

Oliver could barely pull his eyes away from her long enough to catch his son’s attention. 

“Hey William, come say hello.”

The tween dropped his book bag by the door and walked to the couch a little reluctantly; he was in that phase where adults he knew well were acceptable, but strangers were suspicious. Not much different than his toddler years, Oliver thought wryly as he watched him approach.

“This is Felicity. She’s installing our security system today. In fact, she created it.”

“Hi, William.”

“‘Lo.”

It was a start, his father decided. William stayed around to watch Felicity put Overwatch through her paces and must’ve seen something that piqued his interest, because before too long he was leaning over the back of the couch to point at the screen and ask questions. Eventually Felicity looked at Oliver over the arm of his son.

“She still needs to get voice patterns for William. Okay to do that now?”

Oliver glanced up at William, whose face was unusually animated, the look he used to get as a small boy over fire engines and backhoes. Oliver felt a wave of nostalgia but also joy at seeing a glimpse of happiness in his son. He pushed to his feet before Will could notice and get embarrassed at his dad’s sappiness. 

“Come sit,” he offered, switching places so he could pace slowly behind the couch and observe the two of them. Felicity walked William through the process he had already gone through: Reciting the alphabet, counting to 100, reading through a list of random words slowly and clearly. William even joked, asking if the list was the activation code that turned Overwatch into the Winter Soldier. Felicity threw back her head and laughed at that, but then her expression became more serious.

“That brings up an important point, actually. Overwatch is designed to be practically unhackable, but no system is perfect. In the event that there is a security breach or you think she’s been compromised, there is an override command that will alert and then switch all control back to me, as creator. It should only be used in an emergency, because it will also alert building security and emergency services.”

She looked back over her shoulder at Oliver and he nodded his understanding. The idea that he and his son could one day be in a position where they might need to use such a thing was sobering, but it was also strangely comforting to know Felicity already had a plan in place. 

“I’ll need each of you to say the word clearly for authentication. To trigger the override in an actual emergency you would have to say ‘Overwatch’ before the command. Understood?”

They both nodded, and her back straightened a little, like this was heavy stuff for her to process too. 

“The override command is ‘Snapdragon’.”

Oliver quirked an eyebrow and Felicity grinned briefly. “It needs to be a word you’re not likely to say in everyday conversation.”

“That’s a good word then,” Oliver chuckled. 

She recorded each of them saying it, and afterward it was silent a moment as they all processed what had just happened. It was William, surprisingly, who broke the spell and asked a question, and as Oliver watched the boy interact so comfortably with Felicity he found himself imagining what it would be like to have her around like this all the time. The idea made him feel a bit fuzzy and lightheaded; for a second he feared he’d forgotten to eat lunch, until he remembered the salmon.

The doorbell rang and Oliver crossed the room to answer it, his brain all jumbled up with the Overwatch lessons, pride in his son’s sudden talkativeness, and his own newfound interest in Felicity Smoak. He was reaching for the doorknob before he thought about who might be on the other side. 

John Diggle stood in the hallway, his enormous arms crossed over his chest and a murderous glint in his eye.


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Oh my goodness, I’ve been basking in your love for this fic all week! You all are seriously the best.  
> This chapter was super fun to write—enjoy!

Oliver swallowed. 

“Hello, John.”

He stepped back to allow the man to enter, schooling his galloping heart rate and searching for a spot to focus on other than his own feet. So much for testing a normal resting heart rate today. Oh god. 

“Hi John!” Felicity popped up off the couch, tablet in hand, and practically bounced across the room to him. John uncrossed his arms and reached out to lay a hand on her shoulder in greeting. She almost disappeared under that enormous paw. Oliver swallowed again. 

If anything John was bigger than he remembered. The black tee shirt stretched across his chest advertised his gym franchise. DFC, it read, inside a helmet-shaped logo. 

“John, this is our client, Oliver Queen.”

John’s hand dropped from Felicity’s shoulder and his eyes flicked to Oliver. His biceps twitched once. “We’ve met.”

Felicity’s head tipped in curiosity. “Oh? I didn’t realize.”

“It’s been a few years.” Oliver glanced up once to her with a brief smile. 

A heavy, charged silence hung between the three of them until Felicity tilted her ever-present tablet to check the time. “Okay. Well, we’d better get started.” 

John determined the best place to work was in the living room, so they moved the couch and coffee table out of the way while Felicity gathered up her supplies. 

“Bluetooth,” she explained quietly as she pointed out where Oliver should place the wireless sensors. He’d changed into shorts and a tee shirt and currently had the shirt hiked up in order to stick a sensor in place. He glanced once at Felicity and was pleased to see her face turning a delightful shade of pink. 

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t contracting his abs so hard he’d stopped breathing. 

John was assisting William nearby and rumbled an ‘All set’ just as Oliver finished placing the last of his sensors. Felicity tapped around on her tablet and instructed them to stand still and breathe normally for two minutes, to get a baseline. 

Those turned out to be the best two minutes of the rest of the day. 

——————————————————————-

“Ninety-eight...ninety-nine...one hundred.”

Oliver lowered himself very slowly to the carpet, determined not to collapse face-first even if it was his dying move. He focused on the sweat dripping off his hair and gave himself a virtual pat on the back for not groaning as his arms finished bearing his weight to the floor. 

Above him he heard John Diggle clap his hands together once. 

“That should do it—“

Oh thank god.

“—for the moderate exercise. Now let’s ramp it up.”

From where his head lay on the floor he could see a sideways black and white bear face on the tip of Felicity’s shoe; it shifted once as she fidgeted in her cross-legged spot just in front of him. He was pretty sure she made a noise of concern too, but blood was whooshing violently in his head so it was hard to hear. 

“Um, John?” Yep. She was definitely concerned. 

“S’fine,” Oliver interrupted to assure her, rolling to his back so he could sit up now that his arms were dead and useless. Above him John Diggle raised an eyebrow.

“You ready?”

“Go for it.”

He laughed in the face of death. 

——————————————————————

“Oliver? Oliver?!”

“Dad?”

The voices were coming to him from a long way away, or maybe they’d never moved and he was coming back to them from somewhere else. Whichever it was, Heaven had looked like it would be a lot of fun, when the time came. Which was apparently not today, judging by the aches and pains in his body as they hoisted him up to a sitting position. 

“You wanted me to work him—“

“Work him, not KILL HIM!”

“Well do you want me to—“

“I’ve got him. Just go.”

The black spots receded from Oliver’s vision in time for him to watch John’s broad, muscular back disappear through the front door and he couldn’t stop the lift at the corners of his mouth. He’d done it. He’d survived. 

“Oliver, what can I do?” Felicity was hovering over him; she smelled fantastic. It had been so long since he’d had a woman fussing over him like this. Too long. It was tempting to lie back and milk it a bit longer, but he felt disgusting and knew he must smell worse. 

“Just need a shower,” he groaned, rolling away from her to his knees so he could attempt to stand. He made it on his second try. 

She was right there, almost touching him but not, probably because of all the sweat. 

“Oliver, I’m so sorry. I had no idea he would be like that.”

He managed a tired chuckle as he limped his way toward his bedroom. “You mean he doesn’t do that to everybody?” He made it clear by the tone of his voice he knew very well John didn’t do that to everybody. 

“We’ve never, well, worked together before. You’re my first Starling City client,” she confessed, still at his side, though she’d twisted a bit so both of them could fit down the hallway without touching. He was horrifically sweaty. 

The whole situation suddenly became incredibly funny, though his stomach muscles hurt way too much to laugh. “Don’t worry, Felicity. I’m sure he won’t do that to any of your other clients.”

He moved on past her into his bedroom and shut the door politely so she wouldn’t have a chance to ask any questions. 

Shower first, then questions.

Felicity was waiting with a large glass of water when he emerged twenty minutes later. She looked nervous and jumpy, her bottom lip caught in her teeth, and he paused in the middle of taking the glass from her to look her in the eye.

“It’s fine, Felicity. I’m not going to sue.”

She blushed suddenly and her eyes darted away and down. They were both still holding on to the glass, their fingers touching.

“No, I know. I’m not worried about that. I—“

She relinquished her grip and he concentrated on gulping down the entire glass before prompting her with his eyes to finish her sentence.

“I have to go.”

Oliver paused. 

“What, now?”

She nodded miserably. “I have a flight to catch. A last-minute consultation, it just came up this morning and I...I have to go.”

“But—“

“Overwatch is online. She’s ready. I have every command code you need and a troubleshooting guide on here—“ She handed him a flash drive—“and you can call or text or email. Or...call,” she finished lamely. 

Oliver walked on to the kitchen to refill his glass, the flash drive inside his fist. This was terrible. He’d counted on her to be here to walk him through more of the system. To be here to answer the million questions swirling around in his head. 

To be...here. 

Felicity must’ve noticed his concern because she waved a hand behind her to indicate the hallway to William’s room.

“While you were in the shower I went over some stuff with William. He’s a natural with the system. He’ll be a big help.”

Oliver felt a swell of pride at the compliment to his son beneath the bewilderment of being abandoned in his hour of need, but it wasn’t enough to turn his mood. 

“It’s only two days,” she pleaded. “You’ll be my first stop as soon as I land.” She was grabbing her computer bag and the handle of the big plastic box. Oliver nodded into his refilled glass in response. “It’ll be okay. I promise,” she finished.

She banged both sides of the doorframe maneuvering everything into the hall and then the door shut behind her with a click. 

“William!”

He was not one to yell, didn’t like how his voice sounded barking orders, but he did it anyway. The novelty of hearing his father’s raised voice brought William out of his room in a hurry, his head poking around the corner with an expression of trepidation. 

“You’re not in trouble,” Oliver assured him with a sigh. “Felicity said she worked with you on the new security system while I was cleaning up. You think you could show me what I need to know?”

William advanced with his hands stuffed in his pockets, making it seem like he was shrugging without actually moving his shoulders.

“There’s not much to tell.” 

His voice had gotten deep just over the last couple of months, and Oliver thought of Samantha missing out on hearing it with a stab of pain in his heart. It had been almost a year and a half, but they rarely talked about her.

He could barely admit to himself that he didn’t really miss her—that he hardly thought of her at all, the woman he had accidentally made a child with 12 years ago—and the guilt of that threatened to overwhelm him whenever he thought about it. 

So mostly he chose not to think about it. 

Oliver led the way to the couch—which Felicity and William must’ve put back into place while he was cleaning up—and sat with a groan that sounded like an over exaggeration but was definitely not. He plugged the flash drive into his laptop and scrolled through the file, letting William point out the highlights as Felicity had shown him. 

“Overwatch, locate Oliver Queen,” William said confidently into the air. 

“Oliver Queen is in the apartment,” Felicity’s voice returned to them. “Good afternoon, Mr Queen.”

“Um, hi.”

He and William shared a look and his son nodded once, his version of a pep talk; despite the trauma of the last couple hours Oliver felt a smile coming on. 

“It’s time for dinner, Mr Queen. Would you like to order out?”

“No thanks. We have plenty of leftovers.” He could hear the growing confidence in his own voice and grinned at his son, but the push off he needed to rise to his feet was humbling. 

“Oh god,” he groaned, barely keeping the swear words to himself.

“Do you need medical assistance, Mr Queen?”

“No.” It came out low and growly, and he immediately thought better of it. “Sorry.”

William, at his shoulder, flicked him a look. “You have to say ‘Overwatch’ so she knows you’re talking to her.”

Dammit. “Sorry, Overwatch.”

“No problem, Mr Queen. You’ve had a long day.”

The chuckle came out of nowhere. “Thanks for noticing.” He paused with his hand on the refrigerator handle. “Overwatch?”

“Yes, Mr Queen?”

“Call me Oliver.”

——————————————————————

“Can I help, Oliver?”

The mayor spun the empty cardboard roll viciously with a finger and made a noise of frustration. None in the sink cabinet, none in the pantry. He strode across the apartment to William’s bathroom to confirm the same; the roll in his holder was all they had left. 

“Overwatch, order toilet paper,” he growled, swiping his son’s roll and heading back to his side of the apartment. 

“How much would you like me to order?”

“Enough for an army,” he grumbled under his breath.

It had barely been 24 hours since she’d left his apartment, but it felt like a year. He’d dreamt about her overnight, one of THOSE dreams, and the memory of it left him equally turned on and embarrassed. These past twelve years Oliver had focused on two things: His political career and his son. But a few short hours with Felicity Smoak had turned him into a scattered, lovesick mess. 

To add to his growing frustrations Tommy was back, battling William on the PS4 in the living room and asking Overwatch mildly inappropriate questions. 

“You staying for dinner?” Oliver asked as he passed them, toilet paper in hand.

“Well, yeah. I bought yesterday, remember?”

“Great. Most of it is still in the fridge. Help yourself.”

Tommy pulled a face. “Leftovers? Rude. Overwatch, do you have the number for Carlino’s?”

“I do. Would you like me to place an order?”

“Yes please, madam. Lasagna, Fettuccine Alfredo, and Mushroom Ravioli. The family sizes. I assume you have Mr Queen’s credit card on file.” Tommy grinned triumphantly at Oliver, who rolled his eyes. He shot a look at his son, clearly asking why she would even respond to Tommy’s voice, but William only shrugged. 

“Overwatch.”

“Yes, Oliver?”

“Video games are not allowed on school nights.”

“Yes sir.”

Oliver turned toward his bedroom with a tight smile as the television immediately went dark. The ensuing howls of protest were very satisfying. 

Overwatch notified him that Felicity was calling while they were eating; he practically tripped over his own feet getting to his bedroom before he answered. 

“How’s it going?” She sounded like she was being chipper to hide fatigue. 

“Pretty good.” He paused. “You okay?”

It felt a little weird talking to the open air, but he had to admit it was nice to be hands-free in his own home. William had assured him Overwatch would isolate his phone conversations to the room he was in—following him from room to room if necessary—and he fervently hoped this was true as he perched on the end of the bed with a sigh. 

“I’m fine,” she said. “Long day, and I don’t sleep well in hotels. You’re the one I’m worried about.”

“Me?” He smiled. This was nice.

“Yes, you. How are you feeling, after your...well I don’t know if I could call that a workout. Torture session?”

Oliver chuckled. He was sore as hell, but he wasn’t going to admit it. 

“I’m fine.”

“You sleep okay?”

The dream he had of her flashed through his mind and he cleared his throat. “Fine.”

“His heart rate elevated at 3:34am for six minutes.”

Oliver sat in stunned silence for a second before he figured out which Felicity voice had just spoken.

He said “Overwatch” at the same time Felicity did, although his sounded slightly more hysterical. 

“Mute,” Felicity commanded, while Oliver’s eyes roamed the air above him in panic. “Sorry,” she continued, huffing a laugh. “She’s just trying to be helpful. Feel free to tell her to butt out.”

He laughed, but it was forced. They were both quiet for a second.

“So...what exactly was that with John yesterday?” 

Oliver sighed and gathered his thoughts. He’d known this conversation was inevitable, but he still wasn’t ready. 

“It’s a long, sad story in which I come out looking extremely bad.” He ran a hand up through his hair, inventing a stall on the spot. “Could it wait until I tell you in person? Maybe over dinner?”

It was a huge risk; for all he knew she was married with kids. The air around him was silent for a breath and then two, long enough for Oliver to decide he had made a terrible error. He was opening his mouth to take it back when he heard Felicity clear her throat.

“I...really? Dinner?”

“Well, sure. If you want.”

“That sounds...nice.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes. I’d love to. My flight gets in around four tomorrow. I could come by to check you out—check OVERWATCH out, I mean—“

Oliver couldn’t help chuckling at her slip and he heard her give a resigned sigh. “Would you like to go to dinner after?” He could hear the desire in his own voice and wondered at it. 

“Sure. If Wednesday isn’t a weird night to go out...?” She let it drag out into a question.

“It’s fine with me if it works for you.”

“It’s fine with me too.”

He could hear her smile at the end of her sentence and immediately went all gooey inside. 

“Oliver?”

“Yeah?”

“That was Overwatch,” Felicity supplied helpfully. 

“Oh. Go ahead, Overwatch.”

“Your toilet paper delivery is here.”

Oliver’s eyebrows shot up. “Already?”

“It seemed important, so I expedited it.”

Oliver thanked her and heard Felicity comment that toilet paper was indeed essential.

“Security is willing to bring the first pallet up on the freight elevator,” Overwatch continued, “but they want to know where they should put the rest.”

“The...rest? Wait. Did you say pallet?”

“Oliver,” Felicity’s voice had a worried edge, “how much toilet paper did you ask her to order?”

Tommy and William heard his shouted expletive from the kitchen.


	4. Chapter 4

There was never room for error on school mornings, and usually both Oliver and William were short-tempered and rushed as they scrambled out the door, always on the edge of being late. So it came as something of a surprise when they were both ready to walk out the door Wednesday morning with ten minutes to spare. 

Oliver shot his son a skeptical look. “Why are we early? What did we forget?”

William shrugged, head bent to his phone. With the earbuds in it was possible he hadn’t even heard the question and was just reacting to the wah wah sound of his father’s voice. 

I’ve become Charlie Brown’s teacher, Oliver thought with a sigh. 

“Oliver, you just received a priority email requesting your 3pm budget meeting be moved back to 4pm. Would you like to reply?”

He startled for a moment; he was still getting used to hearing Felicity’s voice floating through his apartment without warning, reading his emails to him. He opened his mouth to agree to the change but then remembered his evening plans with the actual Felicity and a little bit of panic welled up inside him.

“Overwatch, reply back that I’m leaving the office at 4:30, so the meeting can’t start any later than 3:30.”

“Yes sir.”

“If any more requests like that come in please deal with it. I’m leaving the office at 4:30 today no matter what. Arm the system.”

“Yes sir. Have a good day, Oliver.”

“Thank you Overwatch.”

“William, you’ll need an 89 or above on today’s Biology test to maintain your current grade average.”

The way William jumped Oliver could tell she’d overridden the sound on his phone and delivered her reminder through his earbuds. William looked around like it was his first day on earth. 

“I didn’t know you had a test today,” Oliver mused as he held the door for his son. 

“Uh, yeah. Thanks, Overwatch.” There was a definite edge of sarcasm in his voice as he slipped out the front door.

They spent most of the ride to the lobby in silence. Oliver was still mulling over the day’s schedule, juggling all the things he had on his plate with his impending date with Felicity. He hadn’t had any more sex dreams about her, but he’d also slept terribly, afraid that he would and then his security system would tattle on him to the woman in question. 

He was so busy thinking of ways to ask Felicity to turn off Overwatch’s nighttime monitoring he almost let William get out of the building without a goodbye. 

“Hey buddy, have a good day at school.”

“Thanks.” Muffled and distant. Oliver reached out and snagged his shoulder and the boy shot him a look that didn’t quite meet his eyes. 

“Tommy’s hanging out with you this evening while I’m out. Make sure he goes over your vocab with you.”

“I know, dad.” William dropped his shoulder enough to get out from under his hand and slouched off with his security detail at his side. Oliver swallowed a sigh and turned in the opposite direction. 

—————————————————————

He’d been at work less than an hour when it began. 

“You have a phone call, Oliver.”

The mayor jumped a foot.

“Overwatch? What are you doing here?”

“I’m integrated into the City Hall security system.”

Oliver held a hand over his thumping heart and made a mental note to ask Felicity about the legalities of his private computer infiltrating public records. Jesus. 

“Would you like me to take a message?”

“What? Oh, sure.” He glanced over the pile of papers marked URGENT on his desk and swallowed a sigh. “Overwatch, hold all my personal calls until lunch.”

“Yes sir.”

“And Overwatch? No talking directly to me if someone else is in my office. At least not yet.”

“Yes sir.”

His morning passed in a blur of paperwork and decision-making. Liz, his unflappable EA, had just stepped out and closed the door behind her when it happened again. 

“Phone call for you, Oliver.”

“Overwatch...”

“You said no personal calls until lunch. You just ordered lunch.”

Oliver glanced at the ceiling for strength.

“It’s Felicity calling,” she added. 

Well that was another situation entirely. “Put her through, Overwatch.”

“Hi there. Got a minute?”

Still Felicity’s voice, but at the same time altogether different. Oliver was smiling already. 

“Absolutely. What’s up?”

“My plane’s boarding. I just wanted to make sure we’re still a go for this afternoon. And for...dinner.”

“We certainly are. I'm looking forward to it.”

“Me too.” 

There was a moment of silence between them and Oliver weighed his desire to keep chatting with the knowledge that she was about to get on a flight and would need to hang up soon. 

“I tried to call earlier, but I couldn’t get through.”

“Yeah, sorry. I told Overwatch to hold my personal calls for the morning.” He grinned, hoping it translated through the phone call. “I should’ve been more specific.”

Felicity huffed a laugh. “There’s a way to help her prioritize your calls. I can show you when I get there.”

“Sounds good.”

“I hate to go, but I’m going to need two hands to get my bag in the stupid overhead bin.” She paused. “I’d better hang up.”

“Sure, sure. Have a safe flight.”

“That is completely out of my control, but I appreciate your confidence in me.”

Oliver laughed out loud. “See you soon, Felicity.”

“Bye, Oliver.”

He sat in thought a minute, staring off into space, then scooped up his phone and let his thumbs fly. Hoping he had time.

O: Do you like Italian?

...

Oliver gnawed his lower lip while he waited.

F: Aren’t you in the middle of important mayor duties? Not to be disturbed?

Oliver grinned.

O: I’m multitasking.

F: Well I am blatantly disregarding the flight attendant who just told us to put our phones on Airplane Mode. Which is a first for me.

...

F: And yes, I love Italian. 

—————————————————————

Everything after lunch passed in a blur. If demands were being made on his time and his very-set-in-stone schedule Oliver wasn’t hearing about it. The budget meeting even went fast, and by 4:23pm he was ushering everyone out of his office and thinking about the last few things he needed to finish before he could go.

Liz flew up from her desk in the outer office as soon as she spotted him and pushed through the exodus from his office to reach him.

“I’ve been trying to get ahold of you for twenty minutes but your landline must not be working. Did you not see my texts?”

Oliver’s eyes darted right and left before settling on his EA. His mobile phone had been sitting on his desk the whole meeting, silent. 

“Um, no. What’s up?”

“The governor is in town today for a campaign rally and he wants to see you. He’s on his way up now.”

Oliver pivoted back into his office with Liz on his heels and ran a hand over his face. The state governor was a pompous windbag in love with the sound of his own voice. He always insisted on being offered a drink, which usually led to dinner. 

“I have an appointment I have to keep.”

They stared at each other until Liz shrugged, at a loss. The ringing phone on her desk pulled her away and Oliver stepped back behind his desk in a rising panic. He shuffled papers in an effort to help his brain formulate a plan. Felicity would be in the process of getting off her plane but he didn’t want to panic too early and call off their date if he could manage to shake off Governor Windbag. 

Liz barreled back into his office like she was on fire. 

“He’s stuck. In the elevator.” Oliver blinked at her stupidly. “The governor is stuck in the elevator,” she reiterated. 

“Our elevator?”

“Yes. Somebody called the fire department.”

“Oh my god. Okay. I’ll be right there.”

Liz nodded as if this was a sound plan, although they both knew there was nothing in his skill set that qualified him to be of any help fixing an elevator. The door closed behind her and he dropped his head to smooth his fingertips over his eyebrows. 

“Oliver, it’s 4:30.”

Jesus God, he’d almost forgotten about her. 

“I know, Overwatch. We have a bit of a situation here.”

“You needed to leave at 4:30.”

“Yes. I know. But a very important person is stuck in the elevator.” 

“Yes. So you’re free to leave at 4:30.”

“No, Overwatch—“ Oliver’s head lifted and he stared out the window as the cold creep of fear washed through his veins. 

“Overwatch,” he said very carefully, “did you shut down the elevator?”

“Lobby security told him you were unavailable but he insisted.”

Before he could reply he heard his own voice floating over the air: “I’m leaving the office at 4:30 today no matter what.” She was playing back a recording of their morning conversation in the apartment. Holy shit.

“Overwatch, re-start the goddamned elevator.” He hardly recognized the growl in his voice as he bit out the words. 

“Yes sir,” came the calm, cool, and unruffled reply. 

————————————————————-

Oliver let himself into the apartment just before 7:00 to the sound of uproarious laughter. Tommy and Felicity were sitting on his couch, William between them, playing a card game. Felicity glanced up and immediately left the game to cross the room to him as he closed the door behind him.

“Oliver, hi!”

“Hey. I am so sorry I’m late.” He’d already explained over the phone the dilemma that led to him treating his very disgruntled governor to a stiff drink and a string of profuse apologies, but it still didn’t feel like enough.

“If anybody’s sorry, it’s me. Believe me, I had no idea she’d take your Do Not Disturb order so seriously. I feel terrible.” She reached out and took his hand and Oliver found it very hard to remember why he’d been upset as he’d walked through the door. 

“Forget it. In the end there was no harm done. I’m just sorry it ruined our dinner.”

Felicity bit her bottom lip. “Yeah. Italian sounded really good.”

Across the room Tommy leaned out behind William’s back. “If it’s Italian you want, there’s a ton of leftovers in the fridge. Somebody ordered WAY too much last night. And even reheated Carlino’s lasagna is an event, trust me.”

Oliver shot Tommy a look, but he and William were already standing and moving toward the kitchen to help Felicity with the plates. 

Tommy disappeared briefly while the rest of them were waiting their turn for the microwave, and when Oliver—last in line—turned with his plate he saw Felicity sitting at the kitchen table with a smile, an opened bottle of wine, and two lit pillar candles. Tommy nudged him on his way out of the kitchen. 

“You never know when the power might go out. C’mon Champ, let’s go eat in your room and practice vocab. And by ‘vocab’ I mean Fortnite.”

Oliver rolled his eyes, but his heart wasn’t really in it. He drifted toward the table as Tommy disappeared down the hall with William in his wake.

“Oliver, video games aren’t allowed on a school night,” Overwatch reminded him. Was it his imagination, or did she sound a little high and mighty when she said it?

“Overwatch, allow thirty minutes of video games.”

“Yes, sir.”

Felicity giggled, but he noticed her face was a little pink. 

“Is she too much trouble? Be honest; I could really use the feedback so I know how to improve her.”

Oliver almost sat, but at the last minute he reached over and killed the lights to make it a genuine candlelit dinner. Then he slid into the chair across from her with a smirk.

“So you’re using me as a guinea pig.”

Her eyes dropped to her plate and the blush deepened, but she was still smiling. 

“I wouldn’t put it that way, but...maybe a little.”

“You said I was your first Starling City client. How many others do you have right now?”

Tommy was right; even re-heated the food was delicious. Felicity chewed and swallowed her bite before she answered. 

“I started the company in Vegas, where I’m from. This level of security is a pretty specialized need, as you know, so I only have a couple other clients at this point.”

Oliver went for a little self-deprecating humor. “And have they had as many mishaps as I have?”

Felicity laughed. “Nothing on the toilet paper scale, if that’s what you’re wondering.” She leaned forward a little and grinned. “What did you do with all of it, anyway?”

“The city’s food pantries and shelters have graciously accepted my donation. As for the pallet security had already delivered, well, let’s just say William will have to be a mummy for the next several Halloweens.”

She laughed again and Oliver lifted the wine bottle to give her a refill. “Did you get a new client out of your trip?”

Felicity tipped her head back and forth in a so-so. “He’s definitely interested in the system, but I suspect he’d rather integrate it into his own set up and I’m not sure I’m comfortable with that.” She waved her fork in the air. “I’m not really interested in becoming a subsidiary of Wayne Enterprises, you know?”

Oliver wished he hadn’t taken a sip of wine just then, because it was all he could do not to spit it out. “You were in Gotham?” he choked. 

“Um, yeah. Do you know Bruce Wayne?”

“We’re acquainted.” He kept his expression very neutral.

Felicity studied him for a beat. “I see.”

Oliver felt a change of topic was suddenly very necessary, but his brain was lagging behind his mouth. 

“If you started out in Vegas, how did you meet John Diggle?” Aw, shit. Why did he bring up John?

“We met at a tech conference.” 

Oliver raised a confused eyebrow.

“Sorry. I was at the tech conference and he was at a fitness conference next door. During one of the breaks I...spilled a latte on him.”

“A latte, huh?” 

Felicity nodded and Oliver began to make plans in his head to send coffee to her office tomorrow. 

Felicity wiped her mouth and pushed her plate back enough to plant her forearms on the table and lean in. She waggled her shoulders in anticipation.

“Which brings us to the real topic of tonight’s conversation: How did YOU meet John Diggle?”

Oliver took another fortifying sip of wine, loosened his tie, and began his story.


	5. Chapter 5

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> If I’ve done my job properly, you won’t like Oliver very much in this chapter.

July, 2002

Oliver widened his stance, rolled his shoulders, and crossed his arms. Tommy, flanking him on the right, whistled a single low note. The man across the courtyard talking to Robert Queen looked like he’d just been released from the NFL. His black suit was not high end but it fit him well. Even hanging loose at his sides it was obvious his arms were roughly the same circumference as Oliver’s thighs. 

“He doesn’t look so tough,” Oliver grunted. 

“Okay. Are we looking at the same guy?”

Seventeen year old Oliver Queen was currently an inch over six feet and hoping to get one more growth spurt before it was all said and done, but in the meantime he was focusing on bulking up. Coach wanted to move him to tight end for his senior year, which meant packing on the weight and conditioning like hell to turn that weight into muscle. His summer had been filled with two-a-days and a soul-crushing amount of hours in the weight room; with only a week to go before school started Oliver was ready to relax a little and enjoy his last few days of freedom.

This new guy was threatening to put a dent in his plans. 

The last time he’d partied was the Fourth of July. It was also the last time he’d gotten laid and owned a not-suspended drivers license. Oliver let his mind drift to that Thursday night just three weeks ago, when his biggest problem was deciding between showing pretty Maggie Dunlevey a thing or two—she’d brazenly asked him to be her tutor, and nobody in their right mind would think she meant academically—and going a second round with the cheerleading captain Bret Miller, who he knew for a fact didn’t need to be taught ANYTHING. 

He’d never had a problem catching the attention of girls, but lately they were stacking up in rows to get a piece of him. He attributed much of this to the work he’d done filling out, but also to the light scruff he’d been cultivating since the spring. Despite his conditioning coach’s constant jokes about his peach fuzz, Oliver knew it softened the overly hard lines of the jaw he’d inherited from generations of Queen men. 

“There goes the party,” Merlyn sighed. 

Oliver shrugged, unperturbed. “We’ll ditch him like we did the others. It won’t be a problem.”

From the corner of his eye he saw Tommy shoot him a skeptical look as Robert Queen stepped away from his conversation and approached his son. 

“Oliver, come meet John Diggle. He’s going to be your driver for the school year, and your personal security.”

Oliver uncrossed his arms and opened his mouth to argue until his father raised a hand to hold off his protests. 

“No John Diggle, no football season. Your choice.”

Oliver’s jaw worked, but he was considering. The morning after the last party, newly sprung from county jail and too hungover to bother disguising his hangover from his furious parents, football had been off the table completely. Despite the edict that he quit his summer workouts with the team, Oliver continued training on his own in their home gym, waking at dawn every day without fail and working for hours until his father agreed that he was serious enough about his sport to be given a second chance. 

He should’ve known that second chance would come with a condition. A six-foot-three, serious-as-a-heart-attack condition. 

His new bodyguard/babysitter stepped forward at a gesture from Robert and extended his hand. Oliver’s fingers twitched but he finally reached out and clasped hands—tightly—with the larger man. 

“John Diggle. Nice to meet you.”

“Oliver.”

The stare down might’ve gone on forever if Tommy hadn’t reached in for his turn. 

“Tommy Merlyn. You’ll be in charge of me too, I guess.” He flashed the man one of his roguish smiles. “That’s usually how this works.”

John’s attention shifted to him as he shook equitably and then he folded his hands together in front of him. Oliver found the man’s gaze on him again, sizing him up, trying to intimidate him. 

“Tight end, huh,” he said then. Oliver felt his face flush; how much had his father already told this guy?

“That’s right.” He left a pause before he followed it with, “You play?”

A faint smile creased John Diggle’s face. “Strong Safety in High School. And college.”

Safety. The defensive position in charge of taking out the tight end. Fate was hilarious. It meant he was fast, and knew how to tackle dirty, if need be. All good information to file away. 

Beside him Tommy was suddenly giving off his l Am Uncomfortable And Would Like To Go Now vibes, which usually happened when he was exposed to too much latent male aggression. He was definitely a lover, not a fighter. In the end Oliver was saved from being the first to have to give way when Raisa stepped out into the courtyard to show the new bodyguard his room. 

“Duuuude,” Tommy intoned under his breath as they watched them leave, Mr Diggle’s broad back eclipsing the housekeeper. “We’re screwed.”

Oliver frowned and led the way into the house.

“I’ll handle it.”

—————————————————————-

“I seem to recall you saying you were going to handle it,” Tommy snarked. It had been three days since John Diggle’s arrival, and so far Oliver hadn’t gotten away with ANYTHING. The usual stuff wasn’t working.

Asking for a ride downtown in order to ditch him at the City Market had been a bust; John must’ve instinctively known the pierogi lady was sweet on Tommy and him and often let them hide in the stall with her during their other escape attempts, because he was already leaning against her counter—cardboard tray of delicious dough pockets in front of him and a knowing smile on his face—when they skidded around the corner. He even bought them an order to split just to add insult to injury. 

Sneaking out in the middle of the night hadn’t worked either; Oliver had dropped from the eaves of his second floor room practically on top of him. He’d even insisted on driving Maggie Dunlevey back home after Oliver’s failed attempt to smuggle her into the house. Dammit, this guy was good. 

Oliver tipped his head back and closed his eyes, letting the late July sun beat down on his face as he floated in the Queen family swimming pool. Tommy’s float bumped against his, making them both bobble. 

“Earth to Oliver Queen,” Tommy tried again; he caught him with a well-placed splash and Oliver grunted. 

“I heard you. I’m thinking.”

Tommy huffed in annoyance. 

The end of the summer party for the Starling Prep incoming senior class traditionally happened at the public beach in the city’s biggest park. But that meant it was nearly impossible to control who showed up. Oliver’s head lolled Tommy’s direction.

“You think we could hold the party at your place?”

It was hard to see the expression on his face with his eyes hidden behind the shades, but Oliver could guess. Tommy’s mother had died when they were nine years old, and shortly thereafter his father—either due to grief or his generally unhinged personality—abandoned his son to the care of the household staff. Tommy in turn became a second son in the Queen family, blending seamlessly into the fold even with the surprise addition of baby Thea the next year. 

As the years passed he settled into a routine of staying at the Queen mansion ninety percent of the time—leaving little work for the Merlyn staff to do looking after him—and in return they tolerated a house party now and again. 

An immediate yes or no answer was normal for Tommy, so when he continued to float there with the dark sunglasses pointed his way Oliver got nervous. 

“Is your dad home?” He never thought to ask anymore because for years the answer had always been no. 

“No, it’s not that. I...I don’t know, it’s stupid.”

“What’s stupid?”

“Nothing. I just got this bad feeling all of a sudden. Like this party is a super bad idea.”

“Tommy—“

“I told you it was stupid.”

“It’s not stupid. But it’s all the more reason to have the party on private property we can control. Plus it’s a lot easier to hide from you-know-who in a mansion than on an open beach.”

Tommy nodded thoughtfully as he dragged an arm in the water to make his mattress spin in a slow circle. 

“You’re right, it makes sense.” His head lifted up and he pointed his shades at Oliver again. “But can we even change it now? Everybody’s going to expect to go to the beach.”

Oliver had already flipped over on his mattress and was paddling like a surfer toward the edge of the pool and his phone. He tapped out a quick message and set it back down on the pool deck before rolling off the mattress into the water. A few underwater strokes later his head broke the surface next to Tommy and he grinned.

“I just texted Bret Miller. The entire Senior class will know in ten minutes.”

—————————————————————

Oliver hissed out a breath as he executed his last bench press. The party at Tommy’s was happening tomorrow night, two hundred people were expected, and if he was going to blow his Cheat Day out of the water with beer he was determined to make himself earn it first. 

“Watch those wrists when you’re getting tired.”

The voice surprised him. Oliver racked the weights with John Diggle’s face upside down above him; his customary black suit had been swapped out for black workout clothes. Oliver stared at him silently.

“That’s some impressive weight you’re lifting. Looks like you’ve spent the summer bulking up. What did you start at?”

“175. Currently at 210.”

“Still a little low for college, but you’ve got time. Especially if you grow again.”

“That’s what I’m hoping.” Oliver sat up and reached for his towel. 

“What else you been doing?”

“Swimming. I eased back on the running. Didn’t want to burn off the weight I’ve put on.”

“Yeah, but with the season starting you’ll need the stamina. Short distance, high intensity runs is what you want. Plus protein. I can talk to Raisa about meals for you if you want.”

Oliver considered his bodyguard for a moment, seeing him in a new light. “Okay. Thanks, John.”

“No problem. Call me Diggle.”

They ran together that evening, after the heat of the day had mostly burned off. Oliver was used to running with his teammates—his last few weeks away from team workouts had soured his desire to go out and run alone—so it was nice to have a running partner again. Diggle only spoke to give him direction, but that was okay. By the time they’d finished their sprint intervals Oliver didn’t have enough air to waste talking anyway. 

“I should’ve had you around all month,” he lamented as they jogged back into the mansion’s courtyard in their cool down lap. 

“I was busy getting out of the army, but I appreciate the compliment.”

Oliver bent to stretch his hamstrings. “Army, huh? So now you’re going into personal security?” He’d always secretly admired the protective instincts of bodyguards, but knew better than to think his parents would allow him down the same career path as the ‘hired help’. 

“Just in the short term. Planning to save up enough to open my own gym. Offer martial arts, self-defense, kids classes. That sort of thing.”

“Sounds cool. You’ll be good at it.”

“Thanks.” Diggle backed toward the carriage house that held the staff apartments. “Hey, we on for the morning?”

“6:30 in the gym. See you there.”

Diggle flashed him a smile and turned away.

For the first time in his life Oliver Queen felt a twinge of guilt at the idea of ditching his bodyguard at a party. 

————————————————————-

The drive was already lined with cars by the time the Bentley carrying Oliver Queen arrived at Merlyn mansion. Despite his exemplary behavior over the past month—Diggle had kept Oliver’s three escape attempts over the last few days to himself—his mother was reluctant to let him go. Only an impassioned speech by his father about how young men needed to blow off steam before they could buckle down and commit to their studies got him out of the house. 

Bret Miller met him at the door in a bikini and handed him a red Solo cup. “Apple juice,” she said saucily to Diggle’s raised eyebrow. Oliver smirked at her and took the offered cup but didn’t drink. Plausible deniability was the gift he intended to give his bodyguard this evening. 

The pool was crowded as partygoers soaked up the last of the day’s sunshine. Oliver had sprung for a DJ, and the scantily clad teenage girls who weren’t in the water swayed and gyrated to the blaring music. 

Tommy Merlyn was too smart to have an open source out on display, but the steady stream of people going into and coming out of the pool house told another story. The man himself squeezed through a knot of dancers with a sly grin and a cute blonde—another cheerleader, maybe—on his arm, and the hulking presence of his bodyguard suddenly became too much for Oliver. 

He tipped his head back toward the main house. “Why don’t you take a break? The Merlyn’s chef makes a fantastic burger.”

Diggle gave him a look that said he was not falling for it but Oliver grinned lopsidedly at him. “Diggle, for once I’m actually where I want to be. You have the car keys, and the nearest house is two miles away. I’m not going anywhere.”

The skeptical look stayed in place but he sighed and turned toward the house. Oliver shot Tommy a triumphant smile and downed the beer in one go. 

“Time to party,” he declared. 

—————————————————————-

He was halfway through his second beer when he spotted Max Fuller standing on the far side of the pool. He raised a hand in greeting to his quarterback and received a nod in return. He was not small by any means, but the guy standing next to him looked twice his size. 

Bruce Wayne.

Fuller often bragged about Wayne being a distant cousin, but he and Tommy had always called bullshit on that. If he really had living relatives he’d be with them and not rattling around in a giant mansion with just an old man for a butler. 

Because that was just weird. Not to mention creepy.

But here he was in the flesh at Tommy Merlyn’s house, looking rich, bored, and uncomfortable. Oliver scanned the crowd for Tommy, because he was the only one who could fully appreciate the appearance of their surprise guest, but his eyes hit Bret and her bikini first and his priorities shifted.

They had the whole night ahead of them after all. 

———————————————————————

He’d lost track of what number this beer was, but Oliver was clutching it to him like a close friend. Night had fallen, the pool had emptied, and the dance party had moved out around the giant bonfire Oliver had insisted was part of the tradition even though they weren’t on the beach. The damage to Malcolm Merlyn’s pristine lawn would cost a fortune to restore, but neither he nor Tommy could bother to care. 

He was almost positive he’d already gotten laid this evening, was pretty sure he’d been with Bret when it happened—she was still hanging on his arm, at any rate—but the mystery of Maggie Dunlevey currently wearing the Starling Prep Athletics tee shirt he’d had on when he’d arrived and loudly announcing that her bikini top was missing remained unsolved. 

Max Fuller swam in front of his vision and slapped him on the shoulder, just as drunk as he was. The hovering bulk of Bruce Wayne was still attached to him. He didn’t look drunk at all. 

“Great party,” Max belched. Bret giggled, and in the background he heard Maggie tell yet another person about her missing top. And then it sounded like she gave them proof. Desire bubbled up inside him as if his brain was blissfully unaware of what his body had recently done. 

“Ollie,” Bret cooed, “let’s go inside.” He felt her pull him sideways a little as she raised up on her toes to nibble his earlobe and Oliver groaned. 

“I don’t know if I can right now,” he chuckled with a big sloppy grin. 

From off to his left Fuller stumbled into him and made him spill some beer as he latched on to his other arm. 

“Here. This’ll help.” He fumbled around for Oliver’s free hand and tried to push a plastic baggie into it. Oliver took possession of it and held it up in front of his eyes in an attempt to focus on its contents.

“Wha’ isit?”

Max leaned in until he was close enough to kiss him, although thankfully he didn’t. “Ecstasy,” he mumbled with a laugh. “There’s a Viagra in there too, just in case.”

Oliver’s head reared back drunkenly. “Viagra? How the hell’d you get tha’?” At the sight of the drugs Bruce Wayne drifted away from their group. No, he didn’t drift, Oliver decided, he fuckin’ disappeared. Poof. Like a ghost. 

Max snickered. “Katie Nobel’s dad’s a doctor and she’s perfected his sig-an-ture.” That last word took awhile. 

Bret was still giggling and her hand seemed to have a mind of its own. It disappeared down the front of his shorts and Oliver decided he wouldn’t need a chemical aid for what she was planning after all. 

“S’alright,” he assured his friend, but Max had already turned away, leaving him holding the drugs. Oliver fumbled the baggie into his pocket for safe keeping and backed Bret up to a pool lounger for round two. One? Whatever. Round two for him at least. He was pretty sure.

——————————————————————-

The music, though still ear-splitting, had gone melancholy. Oliver lay in the cradle of Bret Miller’s hips and listened to Puddle of Mudd sing about things being blurry. You ain’t kidding, guys. He was dead weight on top of Bret—must’ve been bone-crushingly heavy—but she was blissfully unaware if her soft snores above him were any indication. He pushed up off of her with a groan and that’s when he realized his shorts and her bottoms were still in place. They must’ve passed out before they got that far. Huh. 

He left her to sleep and stepped into the bushes to take a piss, then wandered around the edge of the pool—he did check for bodies floating face down, just in case—and out onto the grounds toward the bonfire. He was still quite drunk but able to recognize the back of Tommy’s head highlighted by the crackling flames of the fire. He flopped onto the ground beside him. 

“Great party.”

Tommy blinked blearily at him and then grinned. “Thanks, buddy. It is nice, isn’t it?”

“Mmmmm.” 

And then hands were on him from behind, snaking around his middle and squeezing his pecs. Oliver opened his mouth to protest but was pulled up short when a rather full chest pressed against his back. 

“Where ya been, Ollie?” Ah. The return of Maggie Dunlevey. 

“Hey Mags,” he mumbled, leaning back into her. Somebody sprinted past them around the fire shouting at the top of their lungs and all three of them chuckled. God, everybody was drunk. It was fantastic. 

“There goes another one,” Tommy mused as a second guy ran by at full speed. 

“COPS!!”

Oliver blinked once slowly. What? But by then Tommy had him by the arm, dragging him up with Maggie Dunlevey wrapped around him like a monkey. As he stood and faced the pool he could finally see the flashing red and blue lights bouncing off the back of the house and the—even more terrifying—fire truck rolling toward them with its lights on. 

“Ohshitohshitohshit—“ Tommy pulled them sideways into a stumbling run, making for the trees that bordered the property. Oliver shook Maggie off his back but grabbed her hand to drag her along. 

“Maybe we can hide in the house. The staff will hide us. They’ll hide us.” Tommy chanted it over and over under his breath as they skirted the lawn from the trees, not stopping even when the firemen turned the hose onto their beautiful end-of-the-summer bonfire. 

They’d almost reached the house from the far side—as far from those police cruisers as they could get—when giant hands landed on Tommy and Oliver, one on each of their shoulders. Maggie, though untouched, screamed. 

“I thought I’d never find you,” Diggle growled. “Let’s go.”

Relief washed over Oliver at the thought of his bodyguard sneaking them home safely. But as they began making their way through the house it became clear they weren’t getting out without passing through a line of policemen. Tommy threw him an “Oh well” look, prepared to take his lumps like every other time, but he didn’t have a football season on the line. Or a baggie of drugs in his pocket. 

Oh fuck, the drugs.

Oliver back pedaled suddenly, ducking out from under Diggle’s hand and stepping on Maggie in the process. 

“C’mon man. We gotta go,” his bodyguard demanded. 

“Nonononono.” Oliver blinked rapidly to try to clear his drink-addled brain. Think, you idiot. He’d played in this giant house as a kid. “The attic. There’s a door to it on the second floor, but it also opens into the garage below. There’s a side door out.”

Tommy’s eyes lit in understanding. “Back stairs! C’mon!”

He led the way and they clattered up the stairway with enough noise to wake the dead, but there was so much going on elsewhere in the house it would be hard to notice. The hall was deserted, though they could hear doors slamming elsewhere: Either other kids were trying to hide or the cops had started checking room by room. 

Tommy flung the attic door open and they crowded in with Diggle last. Tommy weaved his way through the long narrow room—only standing height in the very center—past stacks of plastic bins and rolled up Persian rugs to the rectangular panel in the floor with a set of wooden steps folded up on top. John pushed past the teenagers and bent to fiddle with the door, and while he was occupied Oliver snagged Tommy’s arm and pulled him to the side. 

“Fuller gave me Molly. It’s in my pocket. If we get caught I’m fucked.”

The stair contraption gave way just as the attic doorknob rattled. Shit shit shit. 

For the rest of his life Oliver would regret not flinging the packet of pills into the depths of the attic on his way past Diggle down those stupid stairs to freedom. But instead, as light from the hall flooded into the dimly-lit attic, Oliver stumbled against his bodyguard and dropped the baggie into his coat pocket as he all but threw himself down into the garage. 

Tommy had Maggie shoved through the outside door and was hissing at him to hurry his ass up, but Oliver couldn’t help turning to look back up into the attic.

John Diggle’s head was turned toward him as he lay prone at the opening in the floor, his arms pulled behind him and a cop on his back, telling him with his eyes to get going.


	6. Chapter 6

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I sufficiently riled everyone up over teenage Oliver, so to make up for it here’s the next bit a little earlier than usual. Enjoy!  
> Love hearing from each and every one of you!

Oliver refilled his water glass and returned to the kitchen table and Felicity’s shocked expression. 

“Told you it was bad,” he said softly, his voice gone hoarse from so much talking. 

“Oliver...”

He dropped his eyes to his lap to avoid the judgement he assumed he’d see in her eyes. 

“What happened to John?”

Oliver sighed. “He got arrested for possession, of course. My dad bailed him out at three in the morning while I was home safe in my bed—“ He clamped his mouth shut and swallowed hard. If almost twenty years had passed and he still felt physically ill whenever he thought about it, how must John feel? No wonder he’d tried to kill him with exercise the other day. 

“Oliver, look at me.”

He watched Felicity lean forward from under his lashes and made himself look up at her. 

“Did you ever apologize?”

“Of course he did.” Tommy skirted around the table on the way to the kitchen with his plate and William’s in his hands. 

“Tommy, is that really how it happened? At the party?” Felicity fiddled with her napkin as she waited for him to reappear from the sink area. Not that she didn’t believe Oliver, it was just so...

“‘Fraid so. Seventeen years later and his memory is still crystal clear about that night.” Tommy paused to tip his head and stare above her. “Well, the last ten minutes are crystal clear, anyway. The rest...” He held up a hand and tilted it back and forth. Oliver was back to looking at his lap. 

“There’s more,” Oliver said softly. His head raised suddenly so he could address Tommy. “William in bed?”

“Yep. I read him Goodnight Moon and everything,” he teased. “Vocab studied, backpack loaded up, and I finally three-sixty no-scoped a llama on Playground mode, so it was a busy evening.”

“Thanks, man.” 

“Any time.” He stopped behind Oliver’s chair and slapped a hand on his shoulder warmly. “Ms Smoak, don’t be a stranger. Night, guys.”

Silence hung between them for a moment after the front door shut behind Tommy. Oliver found himself breathing shallowly, afraid too much movement or even a sigh would prompt his dinner date to speak her mind. 

And he wasn’t ready for his relationship with her to be over already. 

“I’m sorry I kept you out so late,” he said finally, because endless silence was somehow worse. “You’ve had a long day.”

“Oliver, you said there was more. I need to hear it.”

Her voice was soft, not accusatory, but firm. He reminded himself that he was sitting across from a woman of science; she required all the facts before she made a judgement. Oliver nodded and leaned forward to blow out the candles, then tipped his head toward the living room. 

A quick pit stop for them both and a refill of wine glasses later Oliver settled into the corner at one end of the couch and continued his story. 

“A few years after...that night, my father ran for City Council and won. He chaired the committee for Economic Development, and he was the deciding vote that denied John Diggle a permit to open his first gym.”

“Oh, Oliver...”

The pain in her voice almost undid him. 

“He’d filed under an LLC, Felicity! Nobody knew it was really him. My dad was many things, but he never would’ve denied John a chance to start his own business if he’d known.” The fight went out of him with a sigh. He was back to staring at his lap. “To John’s credit he didn’t give up and eventually it got sorted out and he—“ Oliver waved a hand around vaguely— “You know how successful he is. But I’m sure he thinks it’s come despite the constant intervention of the Queen family.”

He rocked forward and ran his hands up over his face to cradle his head between them. God, what a nightmare. 

Skirt covered knees shifted into his downcast view as Felicity scooted closer by a couch cushion. Her hand came to rest lightly on his leg. 

“Oliver, look at me.” He did, and found her eyes filled with nothing but compassion. “You’re obviously not that seventeen-year-old anymore. My guess is you went through a crucible to get where you are today.” She paused a breath. “What was it?”

He couldn’t stop the unhappy smirk. “I would love to say it was that party, but apparently framing someone for drug possession wasn’t enough to do it.” He took a deep breath. “At the Bon Voyage party I threw myself to celebrate my expulsion from college number four—“ he held up four fingers to emphasize it—“I got Samantha Clayton pregnant.”

Felicity’s hand slid off his leg but stayed next to him on the couch. 

“I know, it’s hard to believe it hadn’t happened before,” he continued, and caught Felicity’s eyebrows lift in an expression that said he wasn’t wrong. “But Felicity, no arrest, no parental lecture, no...letter from the Dean had managed to rearrange my priorities the way finding out I’d be a father did.” Oliver shifted further sideways and suddenly her hand was against his leg again, but neither of them moved to end the contact. “No other big name university would have me, but I did manage to enroll in a community college. I paid for it myself too—which might not sound like much coming from a kid with a trust fund—but up until then that money had been reserved for fast cars and big parties.”

Felicity’s mouth widened to a brief grin at that and he huffed a self-deprecating laugh. 

“I kept the Business major, since I did have a few credits already, but my life really changed when I signed up for a Political Science class as an elective.” He paused, and his hands lifted in wonder. “The professor was amazing, and something about it just clicked for me. She got me an internship working for a campaign and...I was hooked.” Oliver leaned forward animatedly and the sudden return of Felicity’s hand on his knee didn’t feel unusual at all. “By the time I graduated I had managed my first campaign for a local sheriff and I was a father to a toddler. It was crazy and stressful and scary and I loved every minute of it.”

Felicity spoke for the first time in many minutes. “And you and Samantha...?”

Oliver shook his head. “We were never going to be together. We never even tried. She had her life, her parents did NOT approve of me, but we did communicate well and we made a plan. We agreed to be allied but separate in everything, and it worked.” He sighed sadly. “Right up until...”

Felicity bit her lip and leaned closer. “What happened? To Samantha.”

“Car accident, a year and a half ago.” Oliver scrubbed a hand up over his face, suddenly exhausted. “William moving in full time was a smooth transition at first—we’d always shared him 50/50—but lately...I don’t know. Maybe he misses her and we don’t talk about it enough, maybe it’s just the teen years.” Oliver caught her eye and tried to smile. “It’s hard.”

“C’mere.” Felicity leaned in to his space and wrapped her arms around him and Oliver felt the emotional breath he’d been holding for days whoosh out of him as he relaxed against her.

“You are a good person, Oliver Queen,” she murmured against his ear, making him squeeze his eyes shut and nod. If only. He’d just planned to hold her close for a second, but when she didn’t pull back he shifted a little and she came with him, nestling against his chest as he leaned back into the corner of the couch again. 

“Felicity?”

“Hmm?”

“I don’t think I can take those classes from John. Even if they are part of the package.”

Felicity sighed against him and his arm around her back squeezed briefly. 

“No, you probably shouldn’t.” She burrowed in a bit closer and he leaned his cheek against the top of her head. “I’m going to have to add a line in the contract about clients not being the arch nemesis of my business partner, aren’t I,” she said around a yawn. 

Oliver hummed agreement. “Does that mean you’re dumping me as a client?”

“I’ll grandfather you in.”

“Oh, good.”

It was quiet a second. 

“Five more minutes, and then I have to go.”

“Okay.”

———————————————————————-

“Oliver, it’s 6:15 am.”

Where was his pillow? His neck had a terrible crick and his mouth was almost glued shut. Which meant he’d been snoring.

“Five more minutes, Overwatch.”

Something like a smallish hand planted itself in the middle of his chest hard enough to make him grunt. This security system was getting more interactive by the day. 

“That wasn’t Overwatch. That was me. Oh my god what have we done?!?!”

Oliver cracked one eyelid to discover he was half-propped on the couch in his living room—still—with Felicity Smoak in his arms. Still. They’d slept on the couch. All night. And he had probably snored. 

“Hey,” he said, because nothing more suave would come to mind. 

Felicity pushed up off of him with a moan and scrambled forward to reach for her shoes. “William,” she gasped. “He’s gonna wake up and find me. I gotta go.”

Oliver blinked fiercely as he sat up and stretched. “He won’t be up for another thirty minutes. It’s okay.”

“I have to add a No Nemesis clause and now a No Spending the Night with a Client clause. Oh god.” She was muttering to herself as she hopped around the coffee table on one high heel while stuffing her bare foot into the other. 

“It’s fine, Felicity. Nothing happened.” He took a shot at being funny. “Unless this also happened with your Vegas clients.”

She was busy collecting her purse and sweater. “Celine Dion and Britney Spears? Not likely.”

Oliver’s eyebrows jumped in surprise as he followed her to the door. “Well don’t rule out the second one.” She shot him a look and he pulled his lips in, contrite.

“It’s 6:20, Oliver.”

He blinked stupidly. 

“You asked for five more minutes,” Felicity translated helpfully as she reached for the doorknob. 

“Oh, right. Thanks, Overwatch.”

The door was closing behind her before Oliver got his hand on it and held it still. 

“Felicity, hey.”

She froze momentarily and looked up at him like a deer frozen in headlights. 

“You’re the first girl who’s ever stayed over in this apartment.”

She continued to stare. 

“And my favorite,” he decided to add. 

Her eyes softened and one corner of her mouth lifted ever-so-slightly. 

“Bye, Oliver.”

“See you later?”

“Mmhmm.”

“Was that a yes?” He was grinning now. God she was adorable.

“Yes. Jeez. I’ll call you.” She pointed fiercely at him before taking off down the hall. “And be nice to my security system.”

“I’m always nice,” he whisper shouted.

“That’s not what she told me,” Felicity sing-songed back. 

“Well, she started it!”

Oliver watched until she’d turned the corner before he shut the door and leaned against it, all warm and gooey inside. 

———————————————————————

Liz buzzed through his office on her usual afternoon errand of making sure lunch hadn’t made him sleepy. Oliver casually minimized the tab he’d been looking at, namely the sleeping form of Felicity Smoak cuddling with him on the security footage of his living room from the night before.

“Your 2:30 is running late. And the courier dropped off your workout clothes.”

“Mmm, ‘kay. Wait, what? Workout clothes?”

Liz shrugged as she picked up the outgoing mail on his desk and kept going. “5:00. It’s on your schedule.” She paused at the door with a gleam in her eye. “Lucky you, working out with THE John Diggle. Have you seen his picture on the side of those city buses? The man’s a god.”

Oliver’s jaw unhinged. 

He waited for her to shut his door before he collapsed into his chair and scrabbled after his phone to check his calendar. 

“Overwatch.”

“Yes, Oliver?”

“How did this appointment for Diggle Fitness get here?”

“His receptionist set it up this morning.”

“No, no. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”

“It’s part of the package.”

Oliver grit his teeth. “Overwatch, get Felicity on the phone.”

“Yes, Oliver.”

He loosened his tie as he waited, suddenly sweating profusely.

“Oliver, hey. It’s Felicity. Everything okay?”

“Not even a little. Where are you?”

“Um, not far from you, actually. Need me to swing by? Is it Overwatch?”

“Yes and yes.”

“Okay. See you in...ten?”

“Great. Thanks.”

Oliver lived a thousand lives before Liz finally announced her presence and Felicity poked her head around his door. She scanned the room as she pushed through.

“Huh. By the sound of your voice in that call I kind of expected the place to be on fire.”

“My first workout with John Diggle got scheduled for today.”

“Oh. Dear.” 

“How the hell did this happen?”

Her brow crinkled adorably as she rounded the desk to his side. “Mind if I take a look?”

Oliver rolled his chair back to give her space and she leaned forward to access his computer. Her fingers froze almost immediately.

“Is this...” She threw him a look over her shoulder, her ponytail flying. “Were you watching footage of us sleeping?!”

Oh, shit.

“Wha...what? No. I mean...what?”

Felicity rolled her eyes and x’d out the tab before pulling up his calendar.

“She sure did, didn’t she,” Felicity mumbled under her breath. She glanced at him again. “She didn’t ask you first?” Oliver shook his head rapidly and she sighed. 

“I’ll call him and cancel. Sorry, Oliver. I guess I didn’t get ahead of it soon enough.”

He waved her off. “It’s not your fault. This is an issue because of me, not you.” He stood and paced the five steps to his window and back. “You know, maybe this is better. I’ll go, apologize again for everything, and maybe—I don’t know—clear my conscience a little.”

When he looked up Felicity was watching him intently. 

“What?”

A small smile curled the edges of her mouth. “Nothing.” She shrugged. “Personal growth looks good on you.”

Oliver smirked. “If I live through this you wanna try dinner again? Tomorrow night?”

“If you can walk by then, absolutely.”

“Nice.”

Felicity closed the three steps between them in a saunter and planted a finger against his chest. “No Tommy, no leftovers, no sleepovers and you’re on.” She turned on her heel as his hands came up and side-stepped beyond his reach. 

“Two out of three?”

“Don’t die.” 

She disappeared out his door without a backward glance.


	7. Chapter 7

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I have fallen woefully behind on my responses to all the amazing comments I’ve been getting for this story, but as I’m crazy short on time at the mo I opted for a new chapter over replies. I’ll catch up shortly, but until then THANK YOU!! Every comment makes my day! *blows kisses*

The flagship location of the Diggle Fitness empire was located as close as it was possible to get to City Hall. It was a statement piece. A giant middle finger to the Queen family, Oliver thought grimly as he gazed at all ten stories of its turn-of-the-20th-century limestone facade from the far side of the street. 

Oliver had never been inside the building until now. 

It didn’t feel like a gym from the lobby, especially with the soaring ceilings, marble columns, and second floor balcony that ran the perimeter of the space. A hundred years ago this building had been a luxury hotel, and if you squinted enough to block out all the yoga pants and gym bags it was possible to imagine it still was. One of an army of fit, attractive people in matching dri-fit polos and khaki shorts crossed the marble floor to greet him with a smile. 

“It’s nice to see you, Mr Queen. Welcome. Mr Diggle will be with you shortly, but in the meantime he asked me to give you a tour and then start you on the free weights and he’ll come find you.”

Oliver’s eye was caught by the juice bar anchoring one corner of the space offering up kale smoothies and vegan muffins. “Um, great. Thanks.”

A free tour sounded friendly enough, as long as it didn’t end in a secret dungeon in the basement. A portion of Oliver’s brain wondered if he’d opted in to Overwatch’s phone tracking feature. At least Felicity knew where he was. 

The tour covered every floor: The treadmills and ellipticals, the squash and racquetball courts, the basketball court in the converted ballroom, the glass-enclosed lap pool on the roof. His guide left him on the fourth floor with the free weights and the nicest locker room he had ever seen. Even in his not-inexpensive suit Oliver felt underdressed. 

He changed and then took a moment to stand at the edge of the room and center himself: He saw the inside of a gym regularly, it wasn’t that, but something about being on John Diggle’s turf took him back to the days when he thought athletic greatness was still ahead of him. The knowledge that he was looking at the peak of his physical capabilities in the rear view mirror was humbling and a bit sad, and he didn’t like to be reminded of it. 

He was finishing up his last bench press when John found him. 

“You still have trouble with those wrists when you’re tired.”

Oliver racked the bar and huffed a laugh that was part groan. “You remember that?”

John’s face appeared upside down above him, his expression neutral. Oliver sat up and reached for his towel.

“Beautiful place you have here,” he offered when John didn’t speak. He risked a glance up at his former bodyguard as he swiped the towel over the back of his neck and was rewarded with a faint smile. 

“The rest of them are pretty modest.” Oliver watched his eyes roam the space before returning to him. “I wanted this one to be special.”

“It certainly is.” Oliver took a deep breath as he stood. “John—“

“Let’s get started. I have another appointment in forty minutes.”

Oliver pulled his lips in and nodded at the floor. Not yet, then. 

They fell into their easy rhythm from almost two decades before, John giving instruction and Oliver absorbing everything he was taught. The part of him that had been a good athlete loved the repetition of movement and the constant feedback and correction. John began to teach him a hybrid of martial arts and wrestling, blocks and hits meant for close quarters like an apartment. He broke down each move into parts and ran them several times in slow motion until Oliver had memorized each bit, then strung them together so that the series became a single fluid motion. 

“You have a good memory,” John complimented at one point as they finished a pass, and Oliver chuckled.

“Thanks. Sometimes it’s too good.”

“You were probably great at memorizing playbooks.”

They completed the set and stepped away from each other while Oliver shook out his arms. 

“It drove my parents crazy that I was so good with football plays yet so bad at academics.” He focused on the floor, momentarily lost in the past. 

“College sports never panned out for you, I guess.” Oliver looked up at John, who had crossed his arms and widened his stance in a relaxed way. He almost looked interested in his answer. Guarded, but interested. 

“I couldn’t keep my grades up enough to stay eligible, so my dad kept yanking me out and transferring me somewhere with lower standards. Eventually there was nobody left who would take me.” Jesus that hurt to say, but he’d done it to himself. 

“Football wasn’t motivation enough to make you study?”

“Partying was easier than studying. I thought I could scrape by.”

John watched him for a long moment and then considered the ceiling above Oliver’s head. “So how did that guy pull himself together enough to get elected mayor of Starling?” 

Oliver huffed a laugh but turned serious before he spoke.

“I became a father.”

John’s eyes were back on him, studying him. “Not by the redhead.”

Oliver laughed outright then, with a full-on toothy grin. “You mean Maggie Dunlevey? No, it wasn’t her.”

“It coulda been, though.”

Sobering thought. “Yeah, it could’ve.” He sighed, emotionally drained. This was both easier and so much harder than he’d imagined. 

“Time’s up. See you tomorrow.”

It was so abrupt Oliver could barely keep from shaking his head like a cartoon character. John had already turned away by the time Oliver pulled himself together to call out to him. 

“Um, John, wait. I have a—“

“Five o’clock.”

He made a left and disappeared through a door marked Employees Only.

“—date. Tomorrow.”

Dammit. 

—————————————————————-

The steady pounding of running shoes on asphalt lulled Oliver into a state of relaxation. The path he was on ran through the park across the street from the apartment, eventually winding down along the shore of Starling Bay, but when the path forked he chose the one that veered away from the water and dug into the slightly uphill climb back toward home. 

It had been awhile since he’d gone out for a run, but even after a full day’s work and his session with John he was still too keyed-up to go to bed. With Overwatch armed Oliver felt it was safe for him to leave William home alone long enough to put in a couple miles before bed. 

Bed. The bed he hadn’t slept in the night before. The bed that had sat empty because he was on the couch with Felicity. 

Felicity. Her name looped in his brain and began to sound like the rhythm of his feet: Fel-i-city Fel-i-city Fel-i-city. 

Get a grip, he reminded himself. And stop talking to yourself, ya weirdo. 

Overwatch had the door unlocked by the time he got out of the elevator onto their floor. 

“Hello, Oliver.”

“Hey Overwatch.”

“You held an average 8:25 pace for most of your run.”

“Don’t remind me.”

“Would you like me to order you new running shoes?”

“Umm, what?”

“You were favoring your right foot slightly on the walk back. Your left leg is marginally shorter than your right. New shoes with an orthotic insert might help. Would you like me to order a pair?”

“I...think so?” Oliver scanned the air above him, though of course no one was physically there. But sometimes she sounded so damn REAL. 

“Wait! Overwatch?”

“Yes, Oliver?”

“You’re just ordering ONE pair, right?”

“Yes.”

“Okay, good.”

“Where would you put enough shoes for an army?”

Oliver froze on his way to the bedroom. Was she getting a sense of humor?

———————————————————————

He called her on his walk to work.

“Good morning.”

“Well hello there.”

“I woke up by myself this morning. It was very disappointing.” He could almost hear her smile in response on the other end of the call.

“Is that your way of saying you missed me?”

“Well, if it works for you, go with it.”

“How did it go?”

“Sleeping?”

“No!” Felicity laughed. “Your session with John.”

“It was...not bad, actually. I mean, you’re talking to me, so...”

“So he didn’t kill you. Excellent! Did you talk?”

“We made a start. I’m...cautiously optimistic.”

“Fantastic! I’m so glad, Oliver. You’ll have to tell me all about it during dinner.”

The pedestrian crosswalk sign changed in front of him and Oliver made the last-second decision to jog ahead anyway. “Um, about that—“

An over-enthusiastic cab driver screeched to a halt and blew his horn at the mayor of Starling City. Oliver threw a hand out and skirted around the front bumper with a scowl. 

“Sorry ‘bout that. I was saying, about dinner tonight. John wants me to come for my second session. At 5:00. Can we push dinner back a bit?”

“Of course! Six-thirty okay?”

“Perfect. I was thinking Table Salt. It’s close to the gym so I’m not too late.”

“Sounds great. I’ll meet you there.”

“See you then, Felicity.”

He definitely heard her smile that time.

“See you.”

——————————————————————-

“Liz!”

He was opening his mouth to call again when she stuck her head around the door. 

“Yes boss?” Snarky, but with a smile.

“My calendar for today is all screwed up.”

Oliver waved a hand at it in disgust and his EA moved across the room to peek at his monitor.

“No, that’s right. They called a little while ago to change the location for your session, and they moved it back an hour.”

“But...” 

The ringing phone on her desk pulled her away; she threw a shrug at him as she disappeared through the door and Oliver’s shoulders slumped in defeat. “How...“

The gym address was smack in the middle of the Glades, and not the good part. If his session didn’t start until six he wouldn’t be able to get cleaned up and back to Table Salt until close to eight. It was almost like John Diggle was doing this on purpose.

“Oliver, would you like me to change your schedule back?”

His eyes darted left and right. His office door was standing wide open; had anybody else heard her?

“Overwatch,” he hissed. “Not now.”

“I could make you unavailable...”

Oliver pictured all the ways Overwatch could come up with to make him “unavailable”: Car accident? Plummeting elevator? Mild electrocution? The mind boggled.

“No thank you, Overwatch.”

“I could make Mr Diggle unavailable—“

“NO! Overwatch, do NOT do anything to John Diggle. Is that understood?!”

“Yes, Oliver.”

Liz’s head poked around the corner of the door. “Are you talking to yourself in here?”

Oliver sighed in defeat. 

———————————————————————

It took an eye-rolling amount of time for his personal security to decide how to get to his workout session. There was a faction that didn’t think he should go at all, it was that dangerous, but the concern had barely been voiced before Oliver was scooping up his own car keys and striding around the desk for the door. 

“I’m Mayor of the Glades too, and I’m going. Am I driving?”

Someone else drove him. 

He bypassed a text in favor of a call, even with an audience of muscle—on high alert—surrounding him in the car. 

“Hey,” he said with a sigh. 

“Oh, you sound mopey.”

“Mopey?” There was a smile in Oliver’s voice despite his mood. 

“Is it about dinner? Because it’s really no big deal. We’ll just push it back a day.” He’d texted her from his office when it became obvious there was no way their plans to see each other would work out, but Felicity Smoak was nothing if not a good sport. 

“I’m sorry. I’d love to skip this whole thing and just take you out, but yesterday felt like a breakthrough and I don’t want to ruin it.”

“No, you definitely need to do this.” She chuckled. “As a Starling City voter I fully approve of this decision, Mr Mayor.”

It was Oliver’s turn to laugh. “Well I appreciate your support.” His eyes dropped and he became painfully aware of how many listening ears surrounded him. “Although he’s not my first choice in workout partner.”

“Oh no?”

Oliver closed his eyes and recalled her hovering over his mostly-dead carcass after Diggle’s attempt to murder him with exercise. “My first choice smells better, for one thing.”

Another laugh from Felicity. “I’ll have to disagree with you there, because John Diggle always smells amazing.”

“Yeah, he does. Dammit.”

She giggled and a genuine, full-blown smile—his first of the day—creased Oliver’s face.

“Call me before you go to bed?” She sounded playful. Promising.

“Absolutely. Wouldn’t miss it.”

“Don’t.”

And with that the car pulled up in front of the gym. 

——————————————————————

Oliver Queen was a lifelong gym rat, and despite the opulent atmosphere and state-of-the-art equipment at the downtown location that might seem more a billionaire’s style, this place felt familiar. More like home. 

John was behind the front counter when he walked in flanked by large men in black suits and serious expressions. John’s eyes flicked to the suits and back down to his paperwork. 

“They can wait in the car. You won’t need them.”

“That’s what I tried to tell them.” Oliver shot each man a sour look and they fell back in synch to wait outside. His eyes roamed the space while he waited for John to finish. The place was busy, but not overly crowded. The sound of a pen being dropped on paper brought his attention back. 

“You ready?”

Oliver glanced over himself in reply; he’d changed at the office since he wasn’t headed anywhere after this except home. John skirted the counter and led the way. 

The building was old, probably as old as the fancy converted gym near City Hall, but the years in this neighborhood hadn’t been as kind. The walls were exposed brick, the floors ancient wood planks worn smooth under thousands of feet over a hundred years. The high ceilings were tin. Wrestlers sparred on blue mats and from the back came the sounds of multiple gloves hitting heavy bags. A row of ancient folding chairs lined one wall on the way to the staircase to the second floor. 

The chairs were empty save for one old man: His flannel shirt was torn in places, his jeans ragged. He was wearing construction boots that had once been buff colored; the laces of one were untied. A large green reusable shopping bag, full to overflowing, was stuffed between his chair and the next. 

Oliver met his eye as they passed; the man’s face was creased with deep wrinkles, and there was dirt embedded there that looked permanent, but his eyes were bright blue and snapping with intelligence. Oliver’s eyes dropped away from his gaze and discovered the man’s hands were similarly dirty. 

The man spoke as they passed. “John? You think I could...? For Lucy.”

John slowed and looked at him kindly. “Take two. Tell Rene I said.”

The man nodded and smiled toothlessly as John moved on with Oliver, mute, behind him. 

They climbed the stairs to the second floor: Soaring ceilings and natural light flooding through tall windows greeted them at the top. A row of not-ancient-but-well-used treadmills shared the space with the weights and ellipticals, and at the back of the room a herd of stationary bikes waited for riders. John led them to what open space was left and the gym mat there. 

“Let’s see what you remember from yesterday.”

Twenty minutes later John straightened to his full height and nodded slowly. “Not bad. Did you work on that hold release on your own?”

Oliver, sweat dripping, lifted a shoulder. “I went over it a couple of times before bed.”

“It shows.”

They broke for their water bottles at the same time and Oliver lowered himself to the mat when he saw John do the same. 

“You get a lot of homeless here?” It felt like an awkward personal question, even if he was entitled to ask it as mayor. John stared out toward the front of the building.

“Not many. That guy used to be a heavyweight fighter. Ended up on the streets after his career was over. He likes to come here during the day sometimes. We try to keep stuff for sandwiches around, just in case.”

John paused to squirt water into his mouth before he looked square at Oliver. 

“We feed a lot of kids too. Sandwiches, fruit cups, granola bars. Whatever anybody brings in. Rene—he teaches boxing for me—he kind of runs an after-school program for whoever shows up. Feeds ‘em, shows ‘em how to hit a bag. Keeps them out of trouble if he can.”

Oliver nodded softly; of course he knew there was great need in the Glades, but most of his knowledge came from reports written by committees and coalitions plopped onto his desk, not real-world experience. The realization embarrassed him. 

“Is that why you had me come here?”

John’s sober expression didn’t change. “I brought you here because somebody called in and I had to work here today, Oliver. Not everything is about you.”

He surged to his feet as Oliver hung his head. Put in his place yet again. 

They began the set once more, but just as Oliver stepped in for his move John spun and twisted, catching his arms painfully hard behind him and squeezing. Oliver gasped and grit his teeth.

“You dating Felicity Smoak?” His voice was a snarl in Oliver’s ear.

Oh shit.

“Thinking about it,” he grunted against the pain. John leaned closer and the pressure increased on his arms. His shoulders screamed.

“You hurt her and they’ll never find your body.”

And then he let go, releasing Oliver and ending the pain. John’s shoulder brushed him not quite gently as he passed by on his way to the stairs. 

“Same time next week. Here. Bring your son. I want him to work with Rene.”

Oliver watched him turn the corner and jog down the steps. He waited for John’s head to disappear from sight before he doubled at the waist with a groan.


	8. Chapter 8

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes you don’t have the words. Other times you have all the words, just no time to write them down. I was the second one. Sorry for the delay!

“I’m not sure it’s safe to tempt fate at this point.”

“Nonsense. Third time’s a charm.”

“You think so?”

“I know so.”

“Alright.” Meaningful pause. “How about pizza?”

“I love pizza! We’ll meet up.”

“Okay. Where?”

“I’m the one who’s new in town. Where does the Mayor of Starling City go to get pie?”

“Wherever his son wants.”

A giggle. “Well, there you go. Ask the expert and text me the address. I’ll meet you there.”

“You have yourself a date.”

“FINALLY.”

“I know, right?”

—————————————————————-

It was a mom and pop place, kind of a hole-in-the-wall, but clean. Oliver—for once in his life—was early enough to scope it out and find a good place to sit. He chose a cozy booth with a clear view of the two arcade games and the pinball machine in the opposite corner of the restaurant. His security detail took over a table a discreet-but-reachable distance away.

William slid into the booth across from him without looking up from his phone. 

“You’re going to put that up when Felicity gets here,” Oliver reminded him. They’d been together two hours and he had yet to see his son’s eyes. William nodded once without looking up. 

Oliver studied his son while he wasn’t looking. He was growing again; it seemed he needed longer pants every couple of weeks. Somehow Overwatch knew this, because just this morning she’d asked if she should order longer jeans for William, to which he had gratefully said yes.

For what seemed the billionth time Oliver wondered if this quiet phase was normal. Did all kids this age draw inward, cease communicating, roll their eyes at everything their parent said? His own parents had been anything but hovering; “absent” was the word that came to mind. Not neglectful—there were plenty of people on the payroll to make sure he and his sister were looked after—but their lives outside the family always seemed to come first. Oliver didn’t recall ever being a broody teen, but he’d have to ask the household staff to know for sure. 

A flash of blonde ponytail coming through the door grabbed his attention and pulled him from his thoughts. He watched Felicity scan the room and lifted a hand in greeting when her eyes caught his. The way her face lit up with recognition made him smile like a fool. 

She wove her way to their booth and Oliver patted the tabletop with his palm to get William’s attention. Felicity stopped at the end of the table, a sweater folded over her hands. Undecided in no man’s land. Just when Oliver started to shift aside to make room William looked up and caught Felicity smiling at him. Without a word passing between them he scooted further in and she slid in beside him with a smile. 

“Hi Felicity.”

“Hey William. How’s it goin’?”

“Pretty good.”

Oliver tried very hard to keep his jaw from hitting the floor.

If Felicity noticed his sudden shock she didn’t acknowledge it when she flashed him a brilliant smile and settled into her seat. 

“So, what’s good here?”

Oliver was still fumbling for words—any words—as he watched his son set his phone down in order to flip open the laminated menu on the table between them. He stared in wonder at their heads bent together over it as they deliberated. Felicity glanced up at his probably stunned expression and tipped her head.

“You okay?”

“Uh, what? Yeah. Yes. I’m fine.” He cleared his throat and studied his own menu intently. 

“What looks good to you?”

Oliver’s eyes roamed over the last page and then he looked back up. “I don’t know. Veggie Delight?”

William and Felicity were suddenly both looking at him with similar scrunched up noses. He huffed a laugh at the sight.

“I guess that’s a no. What were you two thinking?”

He watched them glance at each other before they both said “Cheese” very definitively. Oliver sat back in his seat with a laugh as Felicity grinned. William looked happy.

Oliver thought he might cry. 

—————————————————————-

“So, how was your second session with John?”

The pizzas—one cheese, one veggie—were mostly a memory, the leftovers boxed and waiting, by the time Felicity posed her question. Oliver relaxed against the back of the padded booth, stuffed, and glanced at his son standing at the arcade game across the room. 

“Painful,” he decided, fighting the urge to roll his still-sore shoulders. “But I feel like every time it gets a little better between us.”

“That’s good. It’s what you wanted.”

Oliver nodded slowly. “He wants me to bring William next week. To work on boxing, I think.”

Felicity’s face lit up. “With Rene? He’s a great trainer.”

“You know him?” Oliver reached for his beer bottle as she nodded enthusiastically. 

“John suggested I work with him. I love it.”

Oliver frowned. “That’s not a very safe neighborhood.”

“Well maybe the mayor should do something about that.” Her look was pleasant but challenging. He dropped his eyes to the table and huffed a laugh. 

“Touché.”

“It’s a great neighborhood, actually, you just have to be aware of your surroundings.” A little smile played across her face. “Anyway, John usually drives me when I go.”

Oliver’s face broke into a grin at her confession but then he sobered. 

“There was a homeless guy there...”

“Eddie?”

“You know him?”

Felicity shrugged. “I’ve spoken to him a few times. He fought in Vegas once, he likes to tell me about it since he knows I grew up there. It makes him light up when he talks about it. Did you know he’s only thirty-eight?”

Oliver thought about his first impression of the man and how old he seemed; it was a shock to know he was actually only a few years older than himself. He shook his head slowly. 

The arcade game across the room came to life with a triumphant blast of electronic music and both of them turned to see William fist pump the air at the level-up. 

“He likes you.” Oliver returned his gaze to Felicity. “That makes me really happy.”

“William’s a good kid. I like him too.”

The smile on Oliver’s face wavered and his eyes dropped to his hand on the table. He leaned forward and dropped his voice.

“I worry about him. That he’s okay. Even though Samantha and I weren’t together, he always had two parents, and now...” He pulled his lips in and sighed through his nose before glancing up at her. “I worry that I’m not enough.”

“I was raised by a single mom.” Felicity reached out to cover his hand with her own. “You’re doing a great job. He’s gonna be fine.”

Oliver’s eyes suddenly felt watery so he cleared his throat and sat back, but not before he’d flipped his hand up and squeezed her fingers gently. Felicity helped him out by changing the subject. 

“What’s Overwatch been up to?”

He huffed a laugh. “Buying me shoes.”

“Oh really.” Her face split into a grin. 

“Yes. And I think she told her first joke.” They laughed together for a second and then the air charged between them. Oliver’s blood pressure went up. “Maybe you could stop by, and...say hello. To her.”

Felicity was staring now, clearly a little mesmerized. Her tongue darted out to wet her lips and his eyes dropped to her mouth automatically. 

“William’s staying overnight with his grandparents tomorrow.”

She continued to stare.

“It might be a good time for you to...say hello.”

“I like grandparents,” she blurted. “I mean, okay.”

“Okay?”

“Yes.” She nodded faintly, a little smile breaking through her frozen spell. “I’d like that.”

Oliver was about to agree, or maybe confess his undying love—his brain was very jumbled, it was hard to tell what was going to happen next—but William was suddenly in his peripheral, no doubt looking for another quarter. 

They collected the bodyguards and filed to the door; Oliver carried the pizza. At Felicity’s car he waited for William to say goodnight to her and then he handed her the box of cheese. At the last second he leaned toward her.

“Til tomorrow then,” he whispered into her hair. 

——————————————————————

Tommy Merlyn was sprawled on the couch watching tv when they walked through the door.

“Overwatch, I had the alarm set. Why did you let Tommy in?”

“He’s on the list,” she said simply, as if that was enough of an explanation. Oliver rolled his eyes at his security system. William disappeared down the hallway to his room while Oliver moved to the kitchen to offload the pizza, but by then his best friend was up off the couch and intercepting the box with a waggle of his eyebrows. Oliver sighed and let him have it. 

“Ugh. Veggie? Dude. Your poor kid.”

“Relax. He and Felicity had cheese.”

He’d moved on into the living room, intending to head to his room to change, but Tommy snagged his arm and dragged him back with a “Whoa there, buddy” that would’ve been funny if it was happening to somebody else. Oliver shot him a look.

“Was this a date? With your kid there? Lame.”

“It wasn’t a date. It was pizza.” He extracted his arm and walked on to his room.

“The date is tomorrow,” he added wickedly as he closed his bedroom door. 

—————————————————————-

Sometime in the night Oliver woke to the quiet drone of voices outside his room. By the time he’d showered and changed exhaustion had set in and he’d fallen straight into bed. Tommy wasn’t a house guest, not really, and clearly he knew how to get in and out by himself. Honestly, Oliver had forgotten all about him by the time he’d come out of the bathroom. 

The rest of the apartment was dark save for a glow from the kitchen; the nightlight above the stove, Oliver thought. Tommy was hunched over the kitchen table talking to himself. Or maybe not. 

“You think it’ll be okay? He’s pretty rusty.”

“His sleeping patterns have evened out and his restful sleep has improved by 87% since they began communicating every night before bed,” Overwatch answered.

Oliver’s blood ran cold. 

“Tommy, what the hell?”

“Oh, hey. Couldn’t sleep. I was just chatting with your girl.”

Oliver suppressed a growl of frustration and fought not to clench his fists. “That’s not...she’s not my girl. Go to bed or get out, but either way stop bothering my security system.” He didn’t wait for a reply as he stomped back down the hall, but of course he got one anyway.

“What? She’s a good listener.”

—————————————————————-

Saturday passed in a blur of anxiety and anticipation. Twelve years. It had been twelve freaking years since Oliver had done more with a woman than grab a drink in a crowded bar, partly because he wanted to keep his political reputation squeaky clean, and partly because he didn’t know how to date and be a dad at the same time. 

But mostly because in twelve years he hadn’t met anyone worth the effort. 

Tommy had teased him mercilessly at first, the man who had known him since before either of them even liked girls let alone knew what to do with them. But as the years passed the teasing had died away, replaced by a watchfulness that was unlike his carefree best friend. It was as if Tommy was waiting for him to start living again but couldn’t bring himself to say it. 

Oliver broke out sweating every time he thought about screwing this up and disappointing everyone. 

Samantha’s parents showed up early for their grandson. Frank waited just inside the door with a version of the look he’d had ever since they’d met; the look that said he still couldn’t understand how all the hard work he’d done raising his daughter had come to this. Oliver had understood that look at the beginning—he’d been no prize—but if turning into a dedicated father and successful civic leader hadn’t changed it there was nothing that would make this man happy, so he chose not to let it bother him. 

William slouched out of his bedroom with his backpack and a book and slipped out the door behind his grandfather. Oliver allowed a small, petty part of him to find satisfaction in the fact that his son didn’t seem happy to spend time with any of his family at this point in his life. Which made his unlikely and instantaneous friendship with Felicity all the more interesting. And precious.

There they were again, the cold sweats.

“Oliver, your heart rate has elevated with no physical exertion for the third time today.”

“I know that, Overwatch.” He huffed a laugh. “It’s possible this date might kill me.”

“Dialing 911–“

“NO, Overwatch! Cancel! It’s just an expression.” Good God.

“Yes, Oliver.”

“What I meant was, I’m really nervous about tonight. This is a big step for me.”

“The Tao Te Ching says ‘A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step’.”

Oliver had to smile. “It does indeed.”

“Neil Armstrong said, ‘That’s one small step for man—“

“Thanks, Overwatch. I get it.”

“You have a telephone call.”

“Who said that? Thomas Edison?”

“No, Oliver. You have a telephone call. It’s Felicity.”

“Oh! Sorry. Put her on.”

“What are you wearing?”

Oliver rolled his eyes. “Does it matter? She can’t see me. It’s a phone call.”

“She who?”

“What? Overwatch, just put the call through.”

“She already did. This is Felicity. God this voice thing is confusing.”

“You’re telling me.” Oliver shook his head rapidly to switch gears. “Hey there. What’s up?”

“I called to see what you’re wearing tonight. I’ve tried on a half a dozen things and I don’t know what to pick. Will we be going out or are we staying in all night—well, not ALL night, obviously, I mean, unless that’s what you were thinking. Except I have no idea what you’re thinking because technically we’ve already spent the night together, except not on purpose—“

“Felicity!”

“Yes?”

Oliver grinned. “I’m wearing jeans and a sweater, which should be good whether we go out or stay in. Though I am planning to cook, if that’s okay.”

“Oh, yeah. Cooking’s good. Cooking’s great, actually. So...yeah. Jeans, sweater, cooking. Lots of...cooking.”

Oliver warmed all over. “See you in a few hours.”

“Okay. See you.”

————————————————————-

Time seemed to fly once he started the preparations for dinner. Before he knew it the chicken and vegetables were ready to come out of the oven and Overwatch was informing him that his guest had arrived. Oliver wiped his hands on a nearby towel and crossed to the door, stopping only to run a hand through his hair and clear his throat. 

A single step.

Felicity was standing in the hallway in a sweater and jeans, her hair down and curling softly around her face. She was smiling up at him. Before he could second guess the decision Oliver took a single step toward her and cupped her face gently between his hands.

And then he was kissing her.


	9. Chapter 9

Her lips were soft, the contact chaste. Maybe he was being a romantic sap, but he could almost imagine this was his very first kiss. Oliver pulled back after a moment, then gave in to impulse again and pressed another light peck on her mouth. And then Felicity moved. 

She sort of fell into him, which at first he took as sagging against him from the Feels and was quite the ego boost. But then he heard a door slam and remembered he had stepped toward her to start the kiss and now nosy Mrs Kowalski and her terror of a cocker spaniel were watching the Mayor making out with a mystery woman in the hallway. 

He still had her face between his hands, still had his lips resting against hers, so he swiveled both of them into his apartment without breaking contact, waltzed her back a step, and blindly swung the door closed with his foot. 

“Hi,” he whispered against her mouth.

When she didn’t answer he finally disengaged with a swallow. He pulled back enough to get a look at her face with the sudden fear that she hadn’t wanted his advances. Her eyes opened, wide and unblinking.

“Felicity?”

She swallowed, her lips just barely parted and very inviting. “I like your hellos,” she decided. Oliver grinned.

“I thought I’d be less nervous if we got that out of the way.”

She hadn’t pulled away. In fact their foreheads were practically touching. She smiled softly. “Did it work?”

“It did, but now I don’t really feel like eating.”

“Oliver, your dish in the oven is ready.”

Overwatch. Oliver sighed softly and finally disengaged, though he let his hands fall to Felicity’s shoulders and squeeze lightly before letting go. “I guess we’re eating after all,” he teased with a smile.

Dinner with her felt like a thing they’d been doing for years. Felicity Smoak never asked questions like “What’s it like being Mayor?” Instead she would challenge him with “What achievement are you most proud of?”, or “What’s the craziest favor you’ve been asked to grant?” It was stimulating and intriguing; he loved to puzzle out how her mind worked. 

Eventually they finished at the table—she insisted on helping him clean up—and migrated to the living room and his new favorite spot, the couch. She curled up in his arms immediately and let him ask the questions for awhile. Oliver wracked his brain to think of subjects as interesting as the ones she’d picked for him, but all he could come up with were questions about growing up in Las Vegas. She didn’t seem to mind, although some of the stories, particularly the part about her father abandoning the family, weren’t exactly lighthearted. 

Time was ticking away and Oliver really wanted to get back to the way they’d started this date, but he wasn’t sure how to get things going again. Being nervous and undecided were new sensations for him where women were concerned. There was a lull in their conversation finally and he was pulling in a breath to ask if she was comfortable when Felicity shifted against him with a sigh. 

“Are we going to kiss again? Because that was really nice.”

Oliver practically snorted with laughter at her bluntness. He lifted her almost bodily and shifted her into his lap so he could show her what he had in mind for the remainder of the evening. 

——————————————————————

He was just thinking about asking Felicity to remind him how to turn off the cameras in the bedroom when Overwatch informed them—rather pointedly, it seemed—of the time. 

He sighed against her neck, the bit just above her collarbone, and pulled away enough to cock his head in exasperation. Felicity’s blue eyes were dancing. 

“I think somebody’s jealous,” she whispered wickedly. She stroked the scruff on his cheek in a way that made him want to purr like a kitten. He was absolutely GONE for this woman already. It was fantastic. 

“Do you want to stay?” He hardly recognized the heat in his own voice. It had been so long—god, SO long—since he’d done this, he was half afraid he’d screw it up, but something about the way she was looking at him let him know whatever they did would be amazing. Not for the first time this evening he wondered what it would be like to make love to a woman he had genuine feelings for. What would it be like to consciously try to make a baby with a woman he loved? That thought led to the age-old remorse about the way William had come into existence and the juxtaposition of the two made him shiver; Felicity must’ve noticed, because she dropped her hand to his bicep and rubbed fiercely for a moment. 

“Are you cold?” 

Oliver shook his head quickly and dipped forward to capture her lips in another kiss. “Just happy,” he whispered. She made a small noise of agreement that buzzed through him like an electric shock. “Can you stay?” he tried again, so very hopeful. 

Felicity pulled back to look at him. “When does William get back?”

“Tomorrow just before dinner. They always keep him as long as possible.” He huffed a sigh that was meant to be a chuckle. “Trying their best to reprogram him, I think.” He paused to look closely at her, gauging her mood. “There’s no chance he’ll walk in on us, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

When she didn’t answer he went back to work on that spot on her neck, hoping to persuade her his way. She tightened her grip on him for a second and then sighed. 

“I have a conference call at nine in the morning.”

Oliver paused. “You could do that here.” He gave her another strategically placed peck. “Who has the nerve to make business calls on a Sunday morning anyway?”

Felicity groaned. “Bruce Wayne.”

He grimaced; that was not a name he liked to hear in any situation, let alone the one they were currently in. “Still trying to bully you into selling?”

“He’s not bullying,” she corrected, leaning away from his kisses and shifting to sit next to him on the couch. Non-plussed about his sudden attitude toward her client, he thought in mild panic. “He genuinely wants a version of Overwatch. I just have to be careful how I give it to him.”

Oliver couldn’t resist jumping on the accidental innuendo. “I would very much prefer if you didn’t give it to him at all.”

The warning look she shot him was full of humor. “You really don’t like him, do you?”

“I really don’t.”

She pulled his hand into her lap and studied her fingers lacing through his. “I remember how you talked about him that night you told me the story of what happened with John.” Her eyes lifted to his. “Do you think he was the one who called the cops on the party?”

Oliver sighed and ran his free hand through his hair. “I’ve always suspected so. It would be just like him to get his own cousin arrested in the name of justice. Or his version of it.”

Felicity seemed to consider her words before she spoke. “Bruce has a very strict code of right and wrong. I think he tries very hard to stick to it, no matter what.”

“Unless it concerns my girlfriend’s invention. And then he’s only interested in his own bottom line.” He couldn’t help it; the guy made him mad. 

Felicity froze for a moment. “Did you say girlfriend?” 

He squeezed her hand gently. “Well aren’t you?”

“I...I guess so.” A slow smile spread across her face. “Yeah. Yes, I am.” 

And just like that she was climbing into his lap and they were back at it. Oliver tangled his fingers in her hair and hummed with pleasure under the onslaught of kisses she was leaving along his jaw. “So you’re staying?”

The kisses slowed and Felicity made a noise that told him she didn’t want to give him the answer. 

“I would,” she began between kisses, “but I have this new boyfriend.” 

He huffed a laugh. “Oh yeah?” He felt her smile against his skin and knew it would be a mischievous one.

“Yeah. He’s really cute and sweet, but he gets jealous if I’m talking to other boys, so I should probably go.” 

Oliver sighed. “Really?”

She pulled back and looked at him so sweetly he knew he’d love her forever.

“He’s so great, I just want to take my time with him, you know?”

He captured her hands and squeezed them. “I know what you mean.”

“Yeah? You’re not mad?”

“Felicity, I could never be mad.”

“Okay, good.” She threw her arms around him for a bear hug and then scrambled off his lap with a triumphant smile. “I’m going to go before I change my mind, and hopefully get some sleep before my conference call.”

Oliver trailed her to the door, trying not to think about what he was missing out on by letting her go. “Let me take you to brunch after, as a reward for Wayne making you do business on a perfectly good Sunday morning. Ten thirty?”

She grinned up at him and he leaned down to kiss her one more time. “It’s a date,” she promised. 

——————————————————————-

Brunch led to a walk in the park which led to a matinee movie which led to Oliver almost being late for his son’s return just before supper. He’d barely made it into the apartment when Overwatch informed him that the Claytons had entered the lobby with William. 

“Thanks, Overwatch.”

“You’ve been gone since 10:15am.”

He couldn’t help grinning as he began pulling ingredients together for dinner. “Did you miss me?”

“You don’t usually leave the apartment on Sundays. The Parks Department budget still needs to be reviewed before your meeting in the morning.”

“I know it does, Overwatch. I’ll do it this evening. Don’t be a nag.”

“I’m not familiar with that word.”

“Look it up,” he suggested around the last of a baby carrot as the doorbell rang. He wiped his hands quickly and jogged to the door to beat William’s key in the lock.

“Hey guys.” Oliver gave them the Mayor Smile, hoping this time it might work. No luck. They stepped inside behind William, who at least looked relieved to be home.

“Mr and Mrs Frank Clayton have entered the apartment.”

Their bewildered looks as they scanned the air made the corner of William’s mouth twitch in amusement. 

“My new security system,” Oliver supplied. He clapped a hand on his son’s shoulder and kept smiling, though he suspected it looked a little crazed at this point. 

“William, give your grandmother a hug,” Mrs Clayton demanded. He leaned forward and allowed it, then stood and stared at his feet while he waited to be released to the sanctuary of his room. But apparently the hug wasn’t enough.

“Finish that history report before you go to bed tonight. It’s not due til Wednesday but you might as well get it done early. And make sure your room stays picked up. Do you have clean laundry?” She threw a suspicious look at Oliver as she said that, but somehow his smile stayed in place. 

“The laundry’s fine. We’re all set.” Oliver reached out for the open door in hopes of getting them to take the hint. “Thanks for having him.”

“Nag is a verb. It means to annoy or irritate a person with persistent fault-finding or continuous urging.”

Oh. God. “Not now, Overwatch.”

“Would you like me to use it in a sentence?”

The look on the Claytons’ faces as he shuffled them out the door was a mix of confusion and horror. Oliver was pretty sure William snorted. 

—————————————————————

“Good news! I’ll see you at the gym tonight.”

Oliver contemplated putting his feet up on his desk as he leaned back in his swivel chair, but the memory of the look on Liz’s face the last time she caught him kept them on the floor. 

“Oh yeah?”

“Yes! I signed up for my first spin class. It’s like riding a bike you can’t fall off of. I’m so excited!”

He’d taken a spin class or two, and exciting wasn’t quite the word for it, but Felicity sounded so enthusiastic he couldn’t tell her otherwise. Besides, if it meant he could see her HE’D take the damn class. Work had kept them both too busy to do more than talk on the phone all week, and he really missed her. 

“You have a way to get there?”

“John has to come by this afternoon for some work stuff. He’s going to bring me.”

“Good.”

“You’re a worry wart.”

Oliver traced a random pattern on his desk with a finger. “I like worrying about you.”

“I know you do.” There was a smile in her voice. “Nag.”

He’d told her the story that night on the phone and they’d laughed so hard Overwatch had refused to acknowledge him for a good half hour. 

“After the gym you wanna come home with William and me for a bit? I’d like to tell him it’s official. Between us.” He was blushing.

“I could do that.”

“Good.” Liz popped her head around the corner of his door to let him know his next meeting was getting underway. “Hey, gotta go. See you tonight.”

“See you, Mr Mayor.”

For the first time in his career Oliver smiled all the way through a meeting.

———————————————————————

William did a double take from his phone as the town car rolled up in front of the gym and Oliver realized—belatedly—that he’d never been in this part of the Glades before. The bodyguard riding shotgun jumped out to open the door and William threw his dad a look. 

“You ready, buddy?”

He didn’t answer, but he also didn’t hesitate to get out of the car. Oliver stayed just off his shoulder all the way to the door anyway. 

The boxing instructor—Rene?—was at the desk when they walked in. He fist bumped William and tipped his head toward the back of the building. 

“We’ll get you started back there, little man.” Then his eyes flicked to Oliver. “You’re upstairs, Hoss.”

Oliver blinked once but kept his mouth shut. He gave his son a shoulder squeeze and watched as Rene led him away to the bags, then headed up the stairs. There was no sign of Eddie the homeless guy. 

He spotted John as soon as he reached the second floor, leaning on the front of the stationary bike Felicity Smoak was sitting on. They were both laughing. Neither of them had seen him yet, so he paused to take in her pink and black Lycra top and yoga pants. She had her hair pulled back into a ponytail with an added headband. His girlfriend. Wow. Oliver couldn’t wait to get her alone at the earliest opportunity.

He’d been having dreams about that ponytail. 

She caught sight of him and waved which made John look his way. The bigger man straightened slowly as he approached and nodded once when Oliver greeted them. 

“Let’s get started,” he said gruffly, deliberately stepping between Oliver and the bike when he would’ve gone in for some kind of touch with Felicity. Or a kiss, maybe. She shrugged good-naturedly and waved him away with a chuckle. Oliver scowled but followed the trainer. 

With the prospect of an evening with Felicity ahead of him he’d expected the hour to drag, but before he knew it John was releasing his hold and telling him time was up. Oliver flopped onto the mat to catch his breath, too tired to care if his new girlfriend could see him struggling to recover. Silent John disappeared like a puff of smoke.

Oliver sat up and reached for his towel at the same time Felicity wobbled into view—soaked with sweat—and collapsed onto the mat beside him. 

“How was your bike ride?” He couldn’t help teasing; she was just too darn cute.

She blew out a breath and hung her head between her raised knees. “At first I thought I was going to die.” Oliver nodded into his water bottle. “And then I was scared to death I wouldn’t.” She fell onto her back as he laughed. 

“I can’t go to your place like this. Look at me, I’m disgusting.”

“You’re beautiful,” he corrected, “but you can grab a shower here. There’s no hurry.”

“Really? You don’t mind?”

He nudged her hip with his foot playfully. “It beats having you drip all over me in the car. Get going.”

She groaned but rolled away to stagger to her feet. 

“I’ll be downstairs with William.”

Her ponytail swung from side to side as she trudged away; Oliver let himself enjoy the view before hoisting himself up with a very unsexy groan of his own. He was getting old. 

William was one of six kids, all roughly his age, taking turns at the heavy bags while Rene shouted encouragement. Oliver thought his son’s form was good but his hits half-hearted. He kept to the side, sheltered by the staircase so he could watch undetected. At one point William grimaced and finally threw a hard punch, but his aim was off and it glanced harmlessly to the side. The boy’s expression went dark, but Oliver couldn’t tell whether it was from anger or disappointment. It made his chest ache. 

Rene caught sight of him and drifted over as William left the bag and went to the back of the line to wait for another turn. 

“He’ll get there.” He crossed his arms and glanced sideways at Oliver. “He’s got a lot of pent-up aggression. Something been happening at school or at home?”

Oliver tried not to bristle at the blunt inquiry and reminded himself Rene was a coach. 

“His mother died about 18 months ago.”

“Oh. Sorry, man. But yeah, that would do it.”

“She wasn’t...we weren’t...thanks,” he decided at last. “And yeah, that’s probably it.” They watched together in silence for another couple of minutes. “Any advice?”

“Bring him back here.” He slapped Oliver across the chest in a friendly way and sauntered back to call his students together for a huddle before releasing them. 

William caught him watching as they were dismissed and walked over with a look somewhere between relief and frustration. Oliver reached for him but he ducked away to head for the entrance. Clearly this wasn’t the time to start up a conversation, but he hoped knowing Felicity was coming with them would bring him around. He was opening his mouth to tell him when he heard his phone buzz in his gym bag. From the corner of his eye he saw his driver, waiting at the front desk, reach for his phone too. 

His fingers were questing in the depths of the bag for the device just as Felicity thumped down the stairs toward him, her eyes wide.

“Oliver, your phone—“

“It’s here. What—“

He looked down at the number as her hand landed on his arm and gripped hard. 

“Somebody just tried to break into your apartment.”


	10. Chapter 10

They saw the lights from the police cars first, bouncing off the nearby buildings in the dusk, and as always Oliver had a flashback to that night at Tommy’s party. But this time the knot in his gut was entirely different. Felicity was on his left, head bent over her tablet as she combed through security footage, William was silent and wide eyed on his right.

Their bodyguard glanced over his shoulder from the front seat as the driver pulled to the curb and told them to stay put until he could check in with the authorities. Oliver swallowed hard. This was serious. 

He sensed Felicity looking at him and glanced over; she gave him a weak smile and slipped her hand into his. 

“This is why you have Overwatch.”

He nodded but didn’t have a reply.

Ten minutes later they were escorted into the parking garage and up the elevator to the apartment. From the hallway nothing appeared to be amiss, if you ignored the phalanx of police officers everywhere. But as soon as he stepped inside Oliver’s chest constricted in horror. 

Shattered glass from the balcony doors littered the living room, and the curtains fluttered in the open air. The floor lamp that always sat in the corner lay crosswise and broken on the floor. Two crime scene investigators snapped photos and took notes while officers stood around speculating and grinding glass into the carpet. 

No words that weren’t profane would come, so Oliver kept his mouth shut. 

Felicity left his side to go to Overwatch’s control panel and he had to clench his fist to keep from grabbing after her. 

“Whoever it was is long gone,” his guard assured him, clearly reading the mayor’s body language. 

“What did they want?” he finally managed to grind out, bewildered.

“Looks like the same thing as before.” Felicity was back. Her fingers fell feather-light under his elbow as she tipped the tablet to indicate the curio cabinet in the corner. The investigator with the camera gave them a nod and they crunched forward to get a look. One door was flung open, but just like before the contents remained more or less undisturbed.

Felicity tapped her tablet and started the video from the security cameras, and Oliver watched with a knot in his stomach as the balcony glass shattered inward and a black-clad body landed in the room. There was no sound feed to tell them alarms were sounding, but what appeared to be strobe lights began to flash. The thief got the one door open before apparently deciding it wasn’t worth the risk and disappearing back the way he’d come.

“Building security showed up three minutes later,” she informed him, ending the video.

“We’re on the eighteenth floor. Did he...repel down or something?”

Felicity shook her head. “So far there’s no evidence that he came from the roof, but look at this.” She ran the footage they’d just watched back and paused it as the would-be thief entered the apartment. “See that? It’s hard to see with the curtains in the way, but those look like lines behind him.”

Oliver’s brow knit in thought. “A parachute?”

“Base jumper, if I had to guess. He probably got out the same way.”

“This is...insane.” Oliver lifted a hand to wipe his face and realized he was shaking. 

“The police will be able to pull footage from the surrounding buildings and hopefully figure out which one he jumped off of.”

Oliver needed a stiff drink and somewhere to sit down, but this place full of shattered glass and uniforms suddenly didn’t feel like his home. It certainly didn’t feel safe. 

“Oliver, when’s the last time you ate?”

Her voice had taken on a worried edge, and more than one hand grabbed onto him as it dawned on him that he was no longer standing completely upright. The next thing he knew he was sitting in a kitchen chair with a glass of water under his nose. 

“Where’s William?”

Felicity’s hand squeezed his shoulder. “He’s safe. He’s in his room. Overwatch is letting him play all the video games he wants.”

A laugh wanted to bubble up out of his chest at that, but all the other emotions he was currently keeping a lid on threatened to follow, so Oliver only clenched his jaw and nodded at the floor. 

After what felt like only seconds but was probably half an hour a bag of Big Belly Burger appeared in front of him. The arm holding it belonged to John Diggle. And then William was there and Felicity was pushing a partially unwrapped burger into his hands with a quiet but firm “Eat”. 

The food brought him back to himself. Oliver watched his son plow through his own burger, and a sigh beside him told him Felicity was eating too. He turned to survey the mess of his living room and finally began processing the next step. 

“We need to clean up,” he decided, but before he could get to his feet Felicity dropped a hand onto his arm.

“We’re sorting out a hotel suite with a floor we can lock down. You need to pack a bag.”

“You really think that’s necessary?”

She looked up from her tablet with an expression that told him she was in business mode.

“This wasn’t some random cat burglar, Oliver. You’re staying in a hotel tonight.”

He sighed and pushed to his feet to comply, and it was only then that he saw John still in his apartment, arms crossed and planted solidly at the front door. Oliver nodded a thank you at him and got a nod in reply. 

Everything in his home now felt foreign to him, as if he was looking at it through someone else’s eyes. He filled an overnight bag on autopilot and carried it back out to the kitchen to find Felicity consulting with one of the last remaining police officers. 

“John’s helping William pack,” she said when she saw him looking around for his son. “The car’s ready downstairs, but we need to do something first.” She handed him a large plastic storage container from his kitchen and a roll of paper towels; Oliver didn’t have to fake the look of total confusion.

She shrugged, embarrassed. “It’s all I could find.” 

He followed her numbly, still completely lost. She led him to the curio cabinet and pulled the first small object out, cradling it in her palm and nodding toward the paper towels. He finally caught a glimmer of her intention and fumbled with the roll of towels and the bowl until he could tear a section off. Felicity wrapped the piece of porcelain—a figurine that had traveled across the Atlantic with his great-great-grandmother—in the paper towel and placed it in the container. 

“Whatever they’re after it’s in here, so we’re going to remove the temptation and then figure out what it is that they want.”

She flashed him a reassuring smile as she handed him the next piece and Oliver concentrated on not dropping anything. William and John were waiting for them by the door when they finished. The hunk of concrete from Berlin was the only thing left and too heavy to put on top of everything else, so Oliver tucked it under his arm and trailed Felicity out of the apartment like a puppy. 

She held his hand in the car even though she had to rest the tablet on her lap and type with one hand. 

“Can you stay?” he whispered at one point, thinking of the last time he’d asked her that question and where they were. She paused her work to look up at him, silent for a long moment. 

“Yes,” she said at last. 

Someone else checked them in while a manager took them up to their floor in an elevator on bypass. Oliver felt like he was in the middle of an action movie. William looked dazed. 

The suite had three bedrooms and a large living room. Oliver realized for the first time that John was no longer with them; a member of their personal security pointed William to his room. 

“Hey,” Oliver said to stop him long enough for a goodnight hug. William leaned in and didn’t pull away first, which told him how much tonight had affected his son. Oliver’s eyes filled immediately. 

“Night, Will,” Felicity offered, then slipped her arm through Oliver’s and pulled him close until the boy disappeared behind his own bedroom door. 

When he unzipped his overnight bag it hit him how out of it he really was; it contained an empty toiletries bag, a pair of jeans, and a silk tie. Felicity peeked around his arm at his hissed “Shit” and smirked tiredly.

“I don’t know what you’re into, Mister, but I am too tired for it tonight.”

She slipped into the bathroom and soon after he heard water running. He remembered then that she was still in her workout clothes and probably hadn’t had time for a shower at the gym before she got the call. The base male part of his brain still entertained a fantasy of going in to join her, but he clamped down on that thought, stripped to his underwear, and crawled into bed. 

The next thing he knew he was waking up and she was beside him, close but not touching, mostly on her stomach with one hand resting under her cheek. She was asleep, though the lights were still on. 

Oliver shifted onto his side to face her and her eyes opened immediately. They stared at each other for a long moment.

“Is this the treatment you give all your clients after a break in?” His voice came out rough and scratchy and he realized how thirsty he was. Felicity’s face relaxed into an almost-smile. 

“You’re the first break in I’ve ever had.”

He reached for her hand and held it gently inside his own and she shifted a bit closer. “Well your service is excellent.”

“Yeah?”

“VIP.”

She smiled. “Don’t get a big head about it. I’d do the same for Britney Spears.”

Oliver took a deep breath, then two, and made himself get out of bed to turn out the light and head for the shower. 

——————————————————————-

She was gone when he opened his eyes the next time. The bedside clock read 7:30am. He pulled on the jeans and wandered into the living room; Felicity was curled up in a chair and talking on her phone. She glanced up at him, shirtless and leaning in the doorway, and two spots of color bloomed on her cheeks. Oliver suppressed a grin and busied himself getting a glass of water. 

“John’s on his way with breakfast.” She’d covered the phone to whisper shout it across the room and Oliver nodded mid-swallow. He dreaded looking at his own phone; the whole city would know about the break in by now, and Liz would have her hands full fielding questions from the media. 

From her end of the conversation it sounded like she was arranging for a restoration company to begin cleaning up the apartment and Oliver’s eyebrows lifted in surprise; she worked fast. He leaned against the bar of the kitchenette and nursed his glass of water as he listened to her work. 

She finally hung up with a sigh as he was refilling his glass for the second time. “You look better,” she decided. “A good night’s sleep did a world of good.”

Oliver hummed agreement. “Not sleeping alone was also helpful.” She blushed prettily at that. He set his glass down and shoved his hands into his pockets. 

“Does your VIP service include helping the mayor collect all the clothes he so stupidly forgot last night?”

“John’s bringing those along with breakfast.” Felicity grinned at his stunned expression. “Overwatch will help him find everything.”

She leaned forward to snag her tablet from the coffee table and searched around a moment before holding it out to him. He crossed the room to take it.

“The press release for today. Once you approve it I’ll send it over to your office. Liz has already moved all your meetings.” She looked sheepish for a second. “I figured you’d want to take a day to process.”

Oliver gaped at the neat, professional statement about the break-in ready to go out to all the news outlets. It was as good as any PR rep could do. 

“You’ve gotten all this done already? It’s not even eight o’clock!”

Felicity’s face lit up; she looked genuinely pleased at his praise. 

There was a knock on the door and John Diggle let himself in, laden with a box of donuts and a store-bought fruit tray. There was a gym bag slung over his shoulder and a cardboard carrier of coffees in one hand. Oliver hustled across the room to help unburden him and endured a skeptical eyebrow at his bare torso. 

“This looks great. Thanks, John.”

“You seem better.”

Oliver nodded agreement as Felicity appeared at his side, tiny in her bare feet, and made grabby hands at the coffee. “I am much better. Thanks.” She glanced up at him and he tried not to smile at her pink cheeks. 

He scarfed a donut and half his coffee before looking up to catch John staring at him, one hand on his hip and coffee cup poised at his mouth. Felicity had hiked herself up onto a barstool and was busy poking a fork around in the pineapple section of the fruit tray. It was clear John suspected the worst where he and Felicity were concerned, but Oliver was having trouble understanding why. Or why he should let it bother him. 

“I’m gonna get dressed and then wake William up,” he decided, swinging the bag onto his shoulder. “Thanks again, John.”

———————————————————————

He kept William home from school and was rewarded with an almost-smile as his son hightailed it back to his room in the suite with a plate full of donuts and fruit. Oliver was pretty sure the urgency had less to do with getting away from the lame grownups and more to do with the PS4 John had disconnected from their apartment and brought along in the gym bag. 

An hour later a showered and fully dressed Oliver Queen sat at the dining table in the hotel suite with a jittery leg as he waited for Felicity to return from her run home to shower and change. He’d been in touch with Liz already, had done what city business he could with no laptop, and was expecting a police detective to stop by after lunch to give him an update. But in the meantime he had to wait—with no patience whatsoever—for his girl to get back. A string of inappropriate-yet-hilarious texts from Tommy kept him sane until she walked back through the door. 

They ordered lunch from room service, and while they waited Felicity produced the container of items from his curio cabinet. One by one he unwrapped each piece and identified it while she researched it on the internet for intrinsic value. As he considered each piece, Oliver found stories he’d never shared before. He held the autographed baseball in his hand from his first—and last—Major League Baseball game with his father, and maybe he’d been sitting in a luxury suite watching the game while his father entertained clients and the ball had come to him not as a home run snag but because Queen Consolidated was the name on the stadium, but still. 

He had her laughing over the crazy things he and Tommy had done as kids when he held up the giant crystal droplet, his souvenir from their ill-fated attempt to actually swing from a chandelier. He knew for a fact there was zero monetary value in the glass beer mug with his name—“Ollie”—engraved on one side and fraternity letters from college number one on the other. That fraternity was most of the reason there had to be a college number two. 

William, who’d eaten too many donuts to want lunch, drifted out of his room in the early afternoon to make popcorn and ended up staying to listen, and at one point Oliver watched his son grinning at a story while Felicity giggled, one hand flying over her tablet and the other buried in the popcorn bowl. He wished he had a physical memento to treasure for this day, too. 

“Well, that’s everything,” he finally sighed. “You already know about that—“ he tipped his head at the chunk of the Berlin Wall—“so...”

Felicity blew out a breath and shook her head slowly. “I honestly don’t know what they’re after. Or what they THINK they’re after. But now we have a list of everything, so I’ll send it over to the police to see if they have any ideas.”

Oliver was emotionally exhausted from all the reminiscing and a nap sounded fantastic, but as luck would have it the detective they had been promised called and asked if they could meet him at the apartment. Tommy agreed to swing by and hang out with William—Oliver worried a bit over the open tab to room service—and a car was ordered to take them. 

He spent the drive over wondering if Overwatch was okay. 

The first thing he noticed was how NORMAL his home looked. The shattered glass was all gone, and only one police officer remained to monitor two men in white coveralls as they put the finishing touches on the new glass balcony doors. The empty space where the floor lamp always stood was the only indicator that this wasn’t the apartment of 24 hours ago. 

He’d planned to call out to her immediately, just to hear her voice. It was crazy to think she’d be traumatized by the break-in, his talking security system, but it was possible she’d been damaged somehow. Though Felicity probably would’ve said something about that. But Oliver’s voice left him as soon as he passed the threshold; he stopped cold and felt Felicity bump into the back of him with a noise of mild surprise.

“Hello, Oliver.”

Oh thank God. 

“Hey, Overwatch.” He stepped aside to allow Felicity into the room and stuffed his hands into his pockets. “You okay?”

He sensed Felicity looking at him but he couldn’t make himself reciprocate. All the feelings from the night before came rushing back; it was all he could do to stand still. 

“She’s fine, Oliver.” Felicity took a step toward him and laid a grounding—and much needed—hand on his arm. “She won’t know how to answer that question, but everything’s working perfectly. I should’ve told you.”

He nodded, his throat tight. This felt incredibly stupid, worrying over a computer. He wasn’t used to having trouble with his emotions; his face suddenly burned with shame. 

A plain clothes officer—the detective—stepped away from the uni overseeing the glass installers and gave them the report, which wasn’t much. A base jumper had launched himself from an adjacent building—they stepped to the windows so he could point it out—just as Felicity had suspected. Witnesses later saw the person land in the park across the street where a black panel van was waiting. No one could identify the suspects and the van had no plate.

“So nothing.”

“I’m sorry, Mayor Queen. I wish we had more. Your security system was amazing, though. You should feel good about coming back here whenever you’re ready.”

He thanked the man numbly and let Felicity guide him back to the relative privacy of the kitchen. When he could finally make himself look at her he saw nothing but love and concern reflected back at him. 

“Oliver?”

“I’ll be okay. I just...” He trailed off in order to pull in a shaky breath. “One more night in the hotel, okay?”

She lifted a hand to cradle his cheek and—witnesses be damned—he closed his eyes and leaned into that reassurance. 

“Let’s get some things for you and William and then we’ll go.”

They left the police officer to lock up.


	11. Chapter 11

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> First of all, the comments and general outpouring of love for this story is amazing! Thank you so much!! I’m so happy it’s resonating with so many of you and helping soothe our battered fandom hearts. With that in mind, I’m doing something a bit different with this update. 
> 
> Oliver’s journey is never a straightforward process—his way out has always been through—but I don’t want to wreck our collective shipper psyche either (myself included) so I wrote both Chapter Eleven and Chapter Twelve this week. I’ll post the second one in twelve hours to minimize the angst. I will not be responsible for anyone’s day drinking, ha ha!  
> Speaking of angst, the musical inspiration for this chapter is Bad Liar, by Imagine Dragons. I quoted an excerpt at the beginning. Read with it on repeat, if you dare! (Evil laugh)  
> Hugs and kisses to all!

Oh, hush, my dear, it’s been a difficult year  
And terrors don’t prey on innocent victims  
Trust me, darlin’, trust me, darlin’

 

In the end they kept the suite the whole weekend. Tommy canceled his Saturday plans and moved into the third bedroom. He suggested watching all the Die Hard movies but Oliver vetoed that—too much broken glass—so they had a Harry Potter marathon instead. 

Felicity stayed too, though they didn’t make a big deal about it. With everyone else sleeping so close by they both agreed on cuddling only, but even then Oliver had the best two nights of sleep he could remember. 

They were packing up to head out Sunday morning before Oliver finally pulled William aside to tell him he and Felicity were officially dating. The look his son gave him let him know that not only was he the dumbest human being alive, but his new relationship was also the worst kept secret ever. Oliver was still busy blinking in shock when William huffed an exasperated sigh and scooped up Felicity’s overnight bag to carry with his own. 

Tommy nearly fell over laughing. 

The first night back in the apartment wasn’t quite as hard as he’d been imagining, except for the fact that Felicity had kissed him sweetly and then gone home to her own bed. Overwatch seemed happy to have them back; she was quite chatty, for her, reading off the entire contents of the fridge and suggesting items she could order from the 24 hour delivery service. Oliver had no idea how Felicity had managed to rig a camera up INSIDE the refrigerator. Did it have night vision?

They settled back into their routine of work, school, and occasional visits in the evening from Felicity, and if not that at least a bedtime phone call. She even rode with them to the gym. Before he knew it a week had passed without further incident. 

Oliver glanced up from the report he was frankly skimming—and not in a productive way—to find Liz handing him yet another manila folder. 

“What’s this?”

“The developer’s proposal to spruce up the Wilson Circle end of the Glades. A month ago you told me to hide it for 30 days and then show it to you again to see if you liked it any better the second time.” 

Oliver wrinkled his nose in preparation to argue, but then he remembered he had said that. Then he paused, because Wilson Circle sounded familiar.

“Why do I know that name?” he asked the retreating figure of his EA. 

“It’s where your new gym is, duh.” That Liz. What a gal. 

Oliver’s brow wrinkled in thought as he flipped through the architect’s renderings of a rebuilt and revitalized neighborhood in the Glades. He thought of John and Rene and their quest to help as many local kids as possible with only boxing lessons and granola bars. He scanned the financials page and then dialed Liz’s number without looking.

“Tell the developer I want a community rec center added to these plans, then pass it on to City Council and let them know they’d better pass it because I’m backing this project one hundred percent.”

——————————————————————-

Another week passed—and then two—with no new developments on the burglary, but no new break in either, which had to be seen as something of a win. Felicity invited them over to her place for a home cooked meal; they arrived moments before the fire department, and after that the Queen men agreed privately that it would be delivery only at her house from now on. 

The visits to the gym became routine, and if William still didn’t look entirely comfortable with the punching bag he at least wasn’t complaining about it. Rene assured Oliver it was a process, but if it got too hard to watch him struggle Felicity was always there to slip her hand into his and offer encouragement. 

He discovered to his delight that he could sit down and plan the week’s menu and Overwatch would take care of ordering the necessary ingredients so they could be delivered fresh just as he needed them. Their mornings continued to run slightly ahead of schedule; even Liz commented on how nice it was to have him in the office fifteen minutes before the first meeting of the day instead of two. Everything in his life seemed to be on track. 

Until the night Tommy came over.

Oliver was clearing the table when he showed up—William had disappeared after inhaling his lasagna, feigning homework—and Tommy stood to the side and watched with his hands in his pockets, agitated. 

“What’s the matter with you?” Oliver began mildly.

“I’m here to ask you the same question.” It was not delivered in his usual devil-may-care tone of voice, and Oliver froze a second to really look at him. 

“What?”

“I ran into Felicity today. She asked about you.”

Oliver’s eyes darted left and right as he tried to follow.

“She asked about you because she hasn’t SEEN you.”

“That’s crazy. We take her to the gym with us every week, you know that. She stops by sometimes after work—“

“I’m talking about a date, you ass.”

Oliver blinked. “I have William. I can’t date like a regular person. I have responsibilities.”

“That’s a bullshit excuse and you know it. I’m happy to come by and hang out with the kid, anytime. I always have been.”

“I know that, I just—things have finally calmed down around here and I—“

“What are you afraid of?!” It came out loud; Oliver flicked a meaningful glance at William’s hallway but Tommy was having none of it. “I know you, Ollie. I’ve watched you live like a monk for the past twelve years, worried that if a woman looked at you longer than two seconds she’d spontaneously give birth. Well let me assure you, if that was true we could already populate a small country with your offspring.”

Oliver could feel his face redden under his best friend’s words. “It’s complicated—“

“You’re afraid. You’re afraid of being happy, of letting go of the mistakes you made as a stupid-ass kid and moving on with your life. Hell, you probably think these break ins are some kind of cosmic payback. You’re stuck wallowing, Oliver, and Felicity’s caught in your wake, because you keep stringing her along, letting her be your—“ he waved a hand around wildly—“IT girl on call so you can hide out here in your fortress of solitude!”

He opened his mouth to protest—or at least to tell Tommy to keep his voice down—but the words stuck in his throat. Just that evening he’d canceled William’s upcoming overnight with his grandparents. He’d canceled the week before too, and their already short patience with him was wearing dangerously thin. 

It was time to admit to himself that he might be using his son as a buffer to keep from taking the next step in his relationship with Felicity.

“She told you? That we haven’t...?” Just uttering that much of the sentence was mortifying. 

“Not in so many words, but I’m an excellent between-the-lines reader.” He smirked, and not in a friendly way. “I’ve had a lot of practice over the years reading you.”

“Tommy, I want to. I just...I need time. To figure everything out.”

His best friend sighed. He looked emotionally exhausted. “Well, get it figured out, because she’s an amazing human being and she’s perfect for you, but if she gets tired of waiting and moves on you’ll have nobody to blame but yourself.” With that Tommy reached for the doorknob to let himself out, but he turned back at the last minute. “You may think you don’t need Felicity, but William does.”

Oliver watched him leave with the truth an ache in his chest.

Because he needed her like oxygen. 

———————————————————————

“Oliver, Felicity just entered the building.”

“Thanks, Overwatch.”

“You’re doing work. Do you want me to tell security to turn her away?”

Oliver looked up from his report with a quizzical frown. “No, I don’t want you to turn her away. Why would you do that? Never mind, I don’t want to know. Let her come up, Overwatch.” He made sure the edge in his voice was evident. 

“Yes, Oliver.”

He met her at the door, anticipating her knock and swinging it open while her fist was still raised. Her mouth made a little “Oh” of surprise.

“Hey.” He swooped in to leave a kiss on that perfect shape before it went away, and when he pulled back Felicity grinned. 

“Hi.”

“Come in.”

She was wearing a swingy red coat over her dress and heels with a strap, his favorite. Oliver pulled her against him and kissed her again. 

“What brings you by?” he murmured when he finally released her for some much-needed air. 

“Besides that?” She giggled and extracted herself from his grasp in order to take off her coat. “William texted me. He’s having trouble with his algebra homework and asked me to come by.”

“Huh. He never said a word about it to me.”

She punched his arm lightly and Oliver allowed himself to fall away from her fist. “That’s because he’s seen your Algebra grades.”

“Ha ha, very funny.” He was grinning now too. He snaked an arm around her waist to pull her close for another kiss before letting her get on with her mission. “Get going. I’ll make you two a snack.”

She obeyed with an adorable bounce in her step and Oliver’s heart lightened for the first time since his confrontation with Tommy. The guy didn’t know what he was talking about. Everything was fine. They were fine.

“Oliver, I found several self-help books on Algebra. Would you like me to order them?”

“What for, Overwatch?”

“For William.”

His eyes flicked up, confused. “He doesn’t need the books with Felicity here. It’s fine.”

They worked for an hour, including the snack. Oliver kept to his spot in the living room so he wouldn’t be a distraction; he had work of his own to keep him occupied, including the review of the Glades neighborhood revitalization, newly-updated with rec center. Felicity plopped herself onto the couch next to him as he was skimming through the drawings, so he scribbled a note to remind himself to ask Liz to give him the names of the hold outs on City Council he still needed to convince and closed the folder. He held his arm out and she snuggled into his side with a happy sigh. 

“How’d it go?” He planted a kiss into her hair and leaned back into the cushions. 

“Great, as always. Just needed to review radical numbers with him and he was good to go. The rest of the time we were just talking.” She laid a hand on his chest for emphasis. “He’s so smart, Oliver.” 

Oliver hummed agreement. “He gets his math skills from his mother,” he assured her with a tired smile. 

“Oh I know. I’ve seen your Algebra grades too, ya know.”

He grinned briefly, then asked Overwatch to dim the living room lights. 

“Mmmm, that’s nice. Just no falling asleep,” she warned him. “I have to be up early tomorrow.” She paused meaningfully and looked up to search his face. “But...maybe this weekend?” 

Oliver gnawed his lip. He’d told the Claytons he worried William was coming down with something, which was shameful, and bad karma besides. He didn’t dare use the same stupid excuse on Felicity, who had just spent an hour with the boy and would know it was a lie. 

“William...I couldn’t work it out with his grandparents. He’ll be here.” Just saying it out loud made him sick with shame. Her expression froze for half a second and then she smiled. 

“No, of course. It’s no problem.” She lay back down against his chest and hugged him fiercely for just a second, and he knew she could tell he was lying. “Do you still want to hang out?”

Oh God. “Absolutely! Felicity,” he pulled her up so she would look at him, “I absolutely want to spend as much time with you this weekend as possible. We both do, okay?” He left kisses that felt desperate on her mouth and up her cheek. “We could go to the zoo, maybe. Or rent a boat and tool around the harbor. Yeah?”

She was laughing now, so he kept up the kisses. “Do you even know what to do with a boat?”

“Sure. You don’t believe me?” She was continuing to giggle so he slowed his onslaught to concentrate on his favorite spot behind her ear. 

“Well for one thing, you used the phrase ‘tool around’, which is definitely not your typical nautical terminology.”

“Don’t worry. I’m sure Overwatch can order me a book that will cover everything I need to know about boating.”

Overwatch said “Yes, Oliver,” at the same time Felicity did and they laughed for the next ten minutes. 

—————————————————————

The nightmares began that night. 

William wasn’t usually in them, but Felicity always was. She was lying in bed with him or sitting on the couch in his living room or standing in the kitchen handing him a plate of lasagna, but always, always she was smiling at him, her eyes dancing, when they broke in. And bad things happened to her. He couldn’t stop them. 

After every one he woke up with a shout, sometimes crying, always soaked with sweat and shaking. Most nights he had to move out to the couch—to lay wide awake—because the sheets were too damp for him to stay in bed. 

Daytime became its own nightmare, thanks to sleep deprivation. He snapped at Liz, forgot the minor details he was usually so good at. Everyone was beginning to notice. It was embarrassing and scary and he was completely miserable. 

In the middle of it all a copy of Boating for Dummies arrived on his doorstep, and Oliver didn’t know whether to laugh or cry.

At the first workout after the dreams started John looked at him a fraction of a second longer than usual but said nothing except to confirm everything was okay at home. Oliver must’ve lied convincingly, because he said no more. As for Felicity, she occasionally got that crinkle between her brows that meant she was working out a mystery, but he did his best to compensate for the fatigue around her and she didn’t push. 

Another week passed; another seven days of continuous nightmares and hellish days. Felicity and William chatted away on the drive to the gym but Oliver was silent, nursing a headache that had begun accompanying all his waking hours. When she dropped a hand onto his arm unexpectedly he jumped and pulled away; he didn’t have to see the hurt expression on her face to know it was there. 

As they exited the car William left his gym bag behind which tangled in Oliver’s feet and dumped him unceremoniously onto the sidewalk. He snapped at him, badly, and stormed into the building without waiting for either his contrite son or his girlfriend. 

At the look on John’s face he swallowed it all down and tried to focus on his lesson, but he could feel the judgement radiating off Felicity in the middle of her spin class, riding the stationary bike as if she could pedal hard enough to move it across the room and run him over. 

“Oliver, STOP.” The barked order cut through his wandering thoughts and made him zero in on John’s worried face. “You’re going to hurt one of us if you don’t focus.”

John let go of his arm—and apparently most of his weight—because Oliver immediately dropped to the mat and lay there in a puddle of sweat. 

“What the hell, Oliver? Something’s wrong. It’s been wrong for the past couple of weeks, but I don’t think you’re telling anyone about it. Am I right?”

Oliver’s hands fisted against the mat. “Everything’s fine. I can handle it.”

John looked up and away; if it wasn’t for the nostril flare it wouldn’t be obvious he was upset. “That’s bullshit,” he said quietly to the far wall, “and you and I both know it. We’re done for today.”

Oliver rolled onto his back and stared at the ceiling for a long time. The headache he had managed to shed with workout endorphins crept back in until the edges of his vision blurred. All at once Felicity’s sweaty face appeared above him, tendrils of hair sticking to her neck and her pink cheeks. She looked amazing, even then. Even with a frown. 

“Oliver?”

He reached a hand up in utter defeat and she grasped it. He’d never realized how strong she was until she planted her feet and hauled on him and he found himself standing. Suddenly he was looking down at her instead of up. The frown was still there. 

“Would you please tell me what is going on?”

Oliver swallowed. He couldn’t meet her gaze. She sighed.

“William told me he’s going to stay with his grandparents this weekend.”

He nodded confirmation at the mat. There weren’t any more excuses to keep him at home, and Oliver was beginning to worry that William would hear him yelling one night and ask him about it. This should be the moment he invited her to stay over, if not for sex then for companionship, at least. But the thought of having one of those nightmares with her next to him in the bed, to have to explain why his heart was being ripped out of him night after night...

The silence dragged out between them until he finally risked a glance up at her. Frustrated tears shone in her eyes.

“Oliver. Can you tell me why—” she stopped and swallowed on what he suspected was a sob, “—why you don’t want me?” It was a squeak at the end. Oliver’s heart broke in two. 

“Felicity—“

“You know what, don’t tell me.” She raised both palms and laid them on his chest with her elbows locked, letting him know she needed space. “I talked to John, you know, after you told me your history with him. He warned me not to trust you.” She stopped to swallow again, to hold back the river of emotion threatening to wash over them both. “He said you might’ve grown up, but at some point you’d revert back to that spoiled teenager who only worries about himself.” Oliver’s eyes slammed shut and his gut roiled. “I didn’t want to believe him. I still don’t. But I don’t know what else to do.” 

Her blue eyes turned flinty. “I’ll be out of town this weekend anyway. I didn’t want to decide for sure until I knew the status of our plans, but clearly you need time to think about what you want.”

Oliver blinked in shock. “Wait, what?Where...”

“Gotham, first thing in the morning. I’m going to finalize the deal with Wayne Enterprises.”

Tommy’s warning, that if she moved on it would be his fault, flashed through his head. 

“Felicity—“

“Oliver. You need to come see this.”

They both turned at the sound of John’s voice. He was standing at the top of the stairs with the same look he’d had that night at the party when he’d come to rescue them as their world turned to chaos. I thought I’d never find you. 

Oliver went cold all over. 

Some time between the top of the stairs and the bottom Felicity’s hand ended up in his, but he had no idea who initiated it. As they turned the corner at the bottom the first thing that caught his eye was the ring of William’s classmates standing silent and wide eyed. John and Rene went about rounding them up and hustling them to the back room for a snack, leaving Oliver and Felicity to deal with William. 

He was yelling—an intermittent, medium-pitched expression of rage with the occasional squeak of puberty—and throwing punches wildly at the heavy bag in front of him. Most of them were landing square, but the ones that didn’t seemed to fuel his anger. His face was a mask of pain and sadness, covered in sweat and tears and every other thing the human body lets go of when it breaks. Oliver heard Felicity moan beside him at the sight, but he couldn’t even make himself squeeze her hand in comfort.

The blows that missed were beginning to outnumber the hits, which left him unsteady and off balance, and one last solid hit gave the bag enough momentum to swing back and knock him onto his backside. He sat with a smack onto the mat and bent double, the yell dying away to a sob. Oliver was across the room immediately, dropping to his knees and prying his hands away from his red and puffy face, stripping the gloves as quickly as possible so he could pull his son into his arms. William flopped over with a whimper and let his father hold him. 

Oliver scooped him up without a word and followed Felicity to the car.


	12. Chapter 12

The automatic upgrade to First Class on the flight out should’ve been her clue this wasn’t going to be a typical business trip. A vintage Rolls-Royce swept her away to the hotel and a suite big enough to host a UN Summit, wherein she found a handwritten note from Bruce Wayne inviting her to meet him in his office for a late lunch. She still had thirty minutes until the car came back. 

Felicity stared sightlessly at the view of rainy Gotham City out her picture window and drew in a shaky breath. Her phone, clutched in both hands, felt heavier than usual in its silence. She didn’t think she’d ever be able to forget the look on Oliver’s face as they rode home from the gym, William limp and silent in his arms. She’d stayed to help get him to bed and then stood there, outside his room, looking into Oliver’s lost and frightened eyes. 

Part of her had wanted to spend the night, just to be near both of them, but a 7am flight was waiting and she still needed to pack. So she’d pushed up on her tiptoes and cradled Oliver’s face in her hands before she kissed him. 

“I have to go,” she whispered. And then she said she loved him. 

He froze beneath her fingers and her jaw clenched; it had slipped out, but she couldn’t be sorry she’d said it. She hugged him tight and his big frame sort of sagged against her, like he was hoping to be absorbed into her body. But before he could bring his arms around her—or, God, say it back—she’d pulled away and walked out the door. 

The buzz of a text notification startled her so much she fumbled the phone.

DO YOU LIKE OPERA, MS SMOAK?

Felicity blew out a breath and texted back a yes. 

——————————————————————-

If there was one advantage to being emotionally destroyed multiple times in a single day it was the complete and utter exhaustion that kept the nightmares at bay. 

Oliver woke slowly, blinking at the ceiling in morning light that felt much brighter than the normal 6am. The clock read 7:30.

“Overwatch, why didn’t you wake me at the regular time?”

“Good morning, Oliver. I tried. You told me to go to Hell. I messaged your office to say you’d be late, and I contacted William’s school.”

He scratched a hand over his scalp and yawned hugely. “Yeah, that was a good plan. Sorry I yelled, Overwatch.”

“No problem, Oliver. Do you want me to wake William?”

“No, let him sleep. Can you start the coffee?”

“Yes Oliver.”

He slipped down the hall to listen at his son’s door first, just to make sure he was still sleeping, then showered and dressed so he could drink his coffee and think about Felicity. He wished he could know for sure he hadn’t imagined it, what she’d said. And then he realized he didn’t have to. 

“Overwatch, play back my conversation with Felicity last night. Right before she left.”

“Yes, Oliver.”

He cradled the warm coffee cup between his hands and stared at the table as he listened to Felicity say she loved him.

Then he asked Overwatch to play it again.

He was still at the table when William finally emerged from his room, a little bruised under the eyes, maybe, but otherwise looking fine. 

“Good morning.”

William’s eyes shifted to the clock on the microwave and back to his father. “Am I not going to school?”

“That depends. Do you have any tests today?”

A solemn head shake no.

“Then you and I are taking a much-needed mental health day. Grab some breakfast and get dressed. We’re going out.”

“Oliver, should I notify Security?”

He caught a flash of irritation on William’s face and pictured himself at twelve, fed up with bodyguards and protocol and being shadowed everywhere. Oliver gnawed his lip thoughtfully. 

“No, Overwatch. But I’m gonna need your help.”

———————————————————————

The earpiece was small. Oliver remembered the exact shape his mouth had made when Felicity first handed it to him. 

“What am I, 007 now?”

She’d rolled her eyes. “Just keep it someplace handy. You never know when you might need it.”

This probably wasn’t what she had in mind, he thought grimly as he pushed it into place inside his ear. 

“You reading me okay Overwatch? You’re sure this will work?”

“Yes, Oliver. Your car has a WiFi Hot Spot, so I’ll be with you the whole time. Are you ready?”

He glanced at William and got a nod. “Ready.”

They waited two breaths for Overwatch to say Go and then moved, slipping down the hall and into the stairwell as she obligingly replaced the security camera feeds with looped footage. Eighteen floors worth of stairs was kind of a bitch, but eventually they hit the parking garage level and were escaping in Oliver’s personal car with no one the wiser. 

So far so good. 

The State Forest stretched from the edge of Starling to the coast, and Oliver knew a secret spot he’d never shown his son. They sat on the trunk of a fallen tree in a sandy cove and watched the waves crash onto the beach. Oliver finally broke the silence.

“I’m sorry I don’t talk about Mom enough.”

He and Samantha has always referred to each other as Mom and Dad; it just felt easier for their son, more personal. Now—with Samantha and his own mother gone—the word felt heavy and foreign in his mouth. William had found a stick on their walk and was poking random holes into the sand. He lifted one shoulder in a shrug. 

Oliver leaned forward to rest his elbows on his knees and kept looking at him. “Maybe we could take some time every day to look at pictures of her or something.”

William still didn’t speak right away, so Oliver waited. 

“Felicity said—“ he dragged the stick in an S-curve through the sand—“every day I could think of something that I would’ve told Mom when she was here and imagine myself telling her.”

“She did?”

William nodded. “She said it helped when her Dad went away. She had a journal.” He wiped the back of his hand across his nose and mouth and Oliver swallowed hard. 

“Would you like a journal?”

Oliver was given another shrug and then a small nod. 

“Okay.”

They sat silently for several more minutes before William stabbed the stick into the ground and let go of it. 

“I hear you. Yelling at night.”

Oliver’s heart began to pound, because this had been his fear all along. He ran a hand through his hair and cleared his throat. 

“Uh, yeah. I’ve been having nightmares.”

“About what?” William looked up at him and waited.

“Felicity, mostly. About bad guys breaking in to the apartment and hurting her.” He clasped his hands together and squeezed hard.

“But that won’t happen,” William said slowly, as if he was reassuring a younger kid and not his dad, “because we have Overwatch.”

Oliver felt a chuckle bubbling up but managed to hold it to a crooked smile. “That’s true. I guess I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Soooo,” William dragged the word out, “does that mean Felicity can come over more often?” 

Oliver’s smile widened and he bumped an elbow into William’s shoulder. “I think she should definitely come over more often.”

——————————————————————-

He took William to the Queen mansion for lunch after a call ahead to warn them. Thea was still away at school so the staff was down to a skeleton crew, but that didn’t stop Raisa from rolling out the red carpet. They ate on the patio overlooking the immaculate lawn, then Oliver gave his son the run of the place while he hung out in the kitchen with the housekeeper to catch up. 

Before the afternoon was over she had them both in aprons helping her make cookies. 

Dinner was a Big Belly Drive Thru run and then they headed home; Oliver was already dreading those eighteen flights of stairs. 

“Overwatch, can you get us up in the elevator without anyone noticing?”

The earpiece had long ago become comfortable, her voice in his ear as she passed him messages or corrected his navigation—they argued a bit over that—a normal thing. 

“Go on my signal,” was her reply; he and William shared a grin at the spy movie feel of it all. She gave them the go-ahead and had the elevator door open and waiting. An express ride later they were sneaking back into the apartment, their security none the wiser that they had been MIA since 9am.

William fell asleep on the couch in the middle of a movie so Oliver covered him up and then retired to his own room to try reaching Felicity. 

The call went to voicemail. 

——————————————————————-

It was nearing nine o’clock on Saturday night. She was disgustingly full from an amazing meal, a second bottle of Lafite Rothschild had just been delivered to the table, and the restaurant they were sitting in on top of the tallest building in Gotham City was honest-to-Google rotating. 

This had to go down as one of the more interesting weekends of Felicity Smoak’s life. 

“Do you dance, Ms Smoak?”

She glanced at the Swing Band finessing a low-key jive across the room and scrunched up her nose.

“Only if the Chicken Dance counts. Do they even take requests?” It was possible she was a bit tipsy from the first bottle of Lafite Rothschild.

Bruce Wayne chuckled. “They will for me.”

Felicity blushed for the eleventy millionth time in thirty-six hours at this man’s smooth delivery. He was handsome, charming, and very very smart, but she couldn’t shake the feeling he was a grownup version of a vintage Oliver Queen. The before-everything-happened-to-make-him-a-man-of-depth Oliver Queen. She missed him so much it made her chest ache. 

Though she kept her smile in place, Felicity’s eyes dropped to her hands resting on the table top. “Bruce, all of this has been an amazing treat, but...”

“You have a boyfriend.”

Her eyes flew to him, but he was looking into his glass of bourbon. 

“Yes. Oliver Queen.”

The muscles in his shoulders bunched for a half-second; she would’ve missed it if she hadn’t been contemplating the perfection of his suit jacket at that exact moment. 

“I hear you know him,” she continued, intrigued. One of his eyebrows lifted. 

“We’re...acquainted.”

She laughed. “That’s exactly the way he put it.”

Bruce knocked back the rest of his drink in one go and set the glass on the table so he could rotate it with the fingers of one hand. 

“I guess he’s grown up a bit since I knew him.” It was grudging—and not very enthusiastic—praise. He finally looked up at her again. “His tastes seem to have improved a great deal.”

There went the blush again. But in the midst of it, under her flustered tipsiness, Felicity felt an itch that needed to be scratched. A mystery that needed to be solved.

“Do you remember that party you were both at all those years ago? Tommy Merlyn’s party? You know the one.” 

Bruce nodded slowly. “I remember.”

Her eyes narrowed in concentration as she studied him. “Then I have a question to ask you.”

—————————————————————-

William was his usual stoic self by the time his grandparents appeared Saturday morning to collect him, but he did give his dad a voluntary hug on his way out the door. Oliver felt like a million bucks. 

He spent the day at City Hall, catching up on Friday’s work as best he could without Liz. Overwatch helped out and kept him company, even surprising him by ordering in from his favorite deli when he forgot it was lunchtime.

It was hard to think he hadn’t communicated with Felicity since Thursday night, but he reminded himself she was on an important business trip with lots of details to finalize; she was probably just too busy to answer his call...calls, whatever. And that one text. There was no use thinking about how Wayne was probably schmoozing the pants off of her—bad analogy. Oliver grit his teeth and tried to concentrate on his job. His very important job. As mayor.

At least he had that over on the smug bastard.

He uncovered one piece of good news during the afternoon; City Council had approved the revitalization project in Wilson Circle. Oliver smiled. John Diggle was going to get a community center. He lifted the receiver to call and give him the good news himself, then thought of a better idea. 

“Overwatch, I need a courier. I want to send the approved neighborhood proposal to John Diggle as a surprise.”

“Yes, Oliver.”

He saw the delivery person off and called it a day. Tommy met him for an early dinner at Table Salt, but when he tried to get Oliver to join him for an evening of clubbing he turned him down in favor of a date with his bed. He was hoping for three nights in a row without a nightmare, and if that went well William was going to be spending next weekend with the Claytons as well, because Oliver and a certain blonde IT genius would have some very important business to attend to. 

All those thoughts stirred him up so much he had to distract himself with sports before he could think about sleeping, which is what he was doing when his doorbell rang at nine o’clock. Oliver ran a hand through his hair and sighed. 

“Who is it, Overwatch?” 

“John Diggle is at the chipmunk.”

Chipmunk? He glanced into the air with a frown as he stood up. “You okay there, Overwatch?”

“I’m fine, Oliver.” 

He let John in with a smile, his mouth opening to ask him how he liked the surprise, which is why he didn’t see the punch coming. He did manage to twist with the momentum and catch himself with his hands as he hit the floor instead of the back of his head, but his jaw wasn’t going to be the same any time soon. 

“What the hell, John?”

“Oliver, do you need me to triangle security?” His head was spinning with the hit, but it sounded like she’d said triangle.

“How could you, Oliver?” That was John, advancing into the room and standing over him as he pushed up off the floor with a shake of his head. God, he hit hard.

“How could I what?” It finally dawned on him. “Is this about the revitalization project?” He swayed as he stood, wary of another attack. “I thought you’d be happy.”

“Happy that your little project calls for demolishing the block that includes my gym, Oliver? Should I be happy about that?! Or was that your plan all along, to get back on my good side so you could screw me over again and watch while it happened.”

Oliver went cold all over, save for the hot throb along his jaw. “John, I...I didn’t know—“

“Bullshit you didn’t know. Are you the mayor? Is your last name still Queen?”

He searched frantically through his memories of the last couple of weeks to try to remember if he’d actually LOOKED at the final plans, because surely he would’ve noticed any demolition. 

Or maybe, in his stupid nightmare-ridden, heart-eyed distraction he’d pushed—bullied, more like—a piece of legislation through City Council that he hadn’t fully read. Oliver felt sick. 

“John—“

“Oliver, rabbit Disney table salt. Table salt table salt table salt.” His security system was giving him complete word salad. 

John stepped forward to no doubt yell some more but Oliver held up a hand and stopped him. Something was very wrong. 

“Overwatch? Overwatch!”

Silence. 

He shot a look at John; the big man was uncrossing his arms and looking around the space, concentrating. “I think someone’s in the apartment.” He said it very softly. “Is the stuff here?” He meant all the things from the curio cabinet. 

Oliver nodded slowly. The police weren’t interested in his container of mementos, and he refused to take Felicity up on her offer to keep it at her place, so he’d set it in the back of his closet with the intention of putting it in his lock box at the bank. But with everything else going on he’d forgotten. 

“Master bedroom closet,” he said quietly. Overwatch was still dead quiet, which was making his heart crawl up into his throat with worry. 

“I’m gonna check it out.”

There was a metallic clunk and the sound of something rolling across the concrete floor toward them, and then their world disappeared under billows of smoke. John pushed him backwards, hard, going for the front door, but a black-clad figure was suddenly there, blocking the way. There was a pop from behind them that sounded like a Nerf gun going off and Oliver heard John grunt before he fell sideways. Oh shit. 

Oliver dropped onto the floor beside him, hoping the thick smoke would hide them. He wasn’t sure she would hear him—or be able to do anything about it if she did—but he didn’t have any other choice. 

“Overwatch,” he barked, “Snapdragon!”


	13. Chapter 13

Oliver wasn’t sure what he’d expected to happen when he gave Overwatch the doomsday code word, but as far as he could tell it hadn’t changed a damn thing. His apartment was still full of bad guys and eye-watering smoke, his security system was still silent, and John Diggle was still passed out on his kitchen floor. It looked like he was going to have to rescue himself. 

Dropping to the floor had been a good move, because they’d lost him in all the smokiness. He felt the pants leg of one of the burglars brush his thigh as they searched for him and Oliver tensed. If he was going to act this would be the perfect time. He was already in a crouch so he swung his outside leg in a sweep that connected with the bad guy’s legs and knocked him off his feet. He lunged forward and slapped blindly at the prone body, looking for an arm to pin back or a windpipe to block. Anything to bring the number of enemies to conscious people closer to one-to-one. 

He figured out he was on the guy’s back when his assailant rolled and Oliver found himself underneath him on the floor. Luckily he’d gotten a good grip around his neck before the roll, so he closed his eyes and hung on until the thrashing stopped. 

Part of his brain hoped he hadn’t actually killed him, but then again he couldn’t be sure he wasn’t meant to be dead himself, in which case fair was fair. When he was sure the body laying on top of him was still he rolled it off of him. One to go? Two? It was impossible to tell inside the curtain of smoke. 

——————————————————————-

He got her on the dance floor after all, the sneaky bastard. Felicity had turned down his offer to open the second bottle of wine, but there was enough of the first one in her to impair her judgement...where tall, handsome, broody men were concerned anyway. Hey, did she have a type? Hmmmm.

Bruce Wayne, as it turned out, was more of a hold-hands-and-sway kind of a guy than a dancer per se, but that was okey dokey as far as she was concerned. Less fancy moves, less chance of getting dizzy and making a fool out of herself. 

Her phone, across the dance floor on their table and inside her purse, began to ring. 

——————————————————————-

If Overwatch wasn’t working he’d have to summon help some other way. Logic would dictate the safest place to be in this apartment was nowhere, which meant leaving by the front door, which meant there was probably someone standing in front of it right now. Oliver slithered across the floor until he found his kitchen table by feel and crawled under it. He had never spent any time considering the effectiveness of a good old fashioned smoke bomb, but he had to admit it was incredibly disorienting, even in his own space. 

For someone who had only recently walked in to that space it must be more so. 

He pushed out the other side of the table toward the refrigerator, imagining the number of steps it normally took to get there from his position, then converting those steps into crawls. When he thought he was close he reached out and snagged the door to the fridge on the first try. From there he could skim his hand along the cabinets until he found the silverware drawer. He raised up on his knees to reach better and very carefully extracted a handful of forks as quietly as possible. Then it was just a matter of retracing his path to the table, ducking under it, and launching the handful of forks back at the kitchen as hard as he could.

They clattered across the floor with a metallic ring; it sounded incredibly loud when the only other noise was the dying hiss that marked the end of the smoke canister. Just as Oliver suspected, footsteps—they were very light, but he was listening for them—headed in the direction of the kitchen. As soon as he heard them pass by the table Oliver launched himself for the front door.

——————————————————————-

Her purse, jittering around on the table top, was the first thing Felicity saw when they returned from the dance floor. She scooped it up as Bruce stepped behind her to hold her chair. 

“Must’ve set an alarm by mistake,” she muttered by way of explanation, although her pulse was already ratcheting up.

She never set alarms by mistake.

“Oh. Frack.”

He leaned over her shoulder for a closer look and they almost knocked heads as hers flew up to look for him. 

“Bruce, I have to go.”

——————————————————————-

“Don’t move, Mr Queen.”

His hand was on the doorknob.

The voice belonged to a woman. 

——————————————————————

“What do you need?” he asked, one hand on Felicity’s lower back and the other held out for crowd control as he hustled them through the restaurant. 

“WiFi.” 

Her fingers were already flying.

——————————————————————-

The familiar details of his apartment were beginning to emerge from the haze. Somewhere nearby he heard John groan. 

“Who are you? What do you want?” They seemed like logical questions, even if it felt like bad movie cliche. Oliver was pretty proud of the steadiness in his voice. 

“We’re not here for you. Just the device.”

“Device? What device?”

“It was in the curio cabinet. It’s still in the apartment. We’ll take it and be on our way.”

“Go to hell.”

The way she’d worded that sentence meant they didn’t have an exact location on whatever it was. Did that mean it gave off some sort of signal? 

The smoke continued to dissipate; it wouldn’t be long before he’d be able to see who he was talking to. He just needed to stall. 

“Did you shoot my friend?” He could make out her head turning to look down at the huge lump of John Diggle on the floor near her foot. 

“Tranq dart. Probably should’ve used two.” It was said as an aside, like she was making a note for next time. Her head didn’t raise right away, kind of checking him out. Oliver licked his lips. 

“Who do you work for?”

She didn’t answer that question, but he imagined he could see her smile. “The device, Mr Queen.”

“Hello, Oliver.”

His knees went weak with relief. He watched the woman’s hand reach up to rest at her ear. “Why is the security system back up?” she demanded of someone. Oliver had the answer to that one. 

“Because my girlfriend is a badass.”

——————————————————————-

Felicity fist pumped wildly. “She’s back online. It’s okay. We’re okay. I’ve gotta get to Oliver.” 

She suddenly remembered where she was and looked around for Bruce. He’d been standing in the doorway of the chef’s office with his hands in his pockets this whole time, watching her work. He had a faintly wistful look on his face that disappeared as soon as he realized she was studying him. She bit her lip. 

“Bruce, do you think you could help me change my flight back to Starling? I need to leave tonight, if there’s anything still going out.”

He seemed to be considering something very serious. Certainly more serious than whether or not he was about to incur change fees. 

“Do you need anything from your hotel room first?”

Her forehead crinkled. “Um, what?”

He sighed. “I have something to show you. C’mon.”

——————————————————————

Oliver smiled. “Security will be here in three minutes. The SCPD will be right behind them. Start talking.”

The woman studied him for a long moment and Oliver could swear she was trying to decide whether or not to just kill him and get it over with. John groaned again and rolled over, attempting to push up onto his hands and knees. 

“Easy, John. Security’s on its way.”

Her eyes flicked between them, annoyed, and then she frowned. “Agent Lyla Michaels, ARGUS. Call them off and we’ll talk.”

——————————————————————

Wayne Manor was impressive, at least the bit she could see as they drove past it on the way to the garage. But this place—the dark, dank, echoey place he was leading her by the hand through—this place was creepy. 

“This isn’t where you kill me, is it?” It was supposed to be a joke, but it came out mildly hysterical.

“Relax, Ms Smoak. You’re perfectly safe.” He paused and gestured upward. “Although you should keep your voice down so you don’t disturb them.”

Felicity risked tripping over something and breaking her neck to glance up—WAY up—at the ceiling that appeared to be, well, moving. 

“Did I mention I’m afraid of bats?” she squeaked. “Which I just learned.”

—————————————————————-

“I always thought ARGUS was a myth,” John grunted. He was slumped over in a kitchen chair and holding a bag of frozen peas against the injection sight on his neck. Oliver had met security in the hallway and managed to call them off—and a couple of minutes later, the police—without letting them into the apartment. He blamed it on a malfunction with his security system, which wasn’t exactly a lie, but he was sure there would be an eye roll-inducing discussion about it with Overwatch at some point in his future. 

Agent Michaels smirked behind John. 

“Let’s see the items, Mr Queen.”

Oliver uncrossed his arms and headed for the master trailed by the agent he’d wrestled with earlier. The guy clearly had a headache, which was nice to see. The baseball bat in the closet was very tempting, but he controlled himself and only grabbed the plastic container and the chunk of concrete wall. 

———————————————————————

Felicity had aced physics, and though the course had only skimmed over thermodynamics she was certain the speed they were flying was improbable, at best. 

“This is...impressive. Did you register a flight plan for this trip? Not that I would ever tell on you if you didn’t. I’m very good at keeping secrets.”

Silence. It had been mostly silence—on his end, anyway—since he put on the suit. Speaking of...Felicity bit her lip and held her peace for as long as possible before she had to ask.

“Feel free to tell me if this is proprietary information, but what...are you wearing? Specifically, I mean. Is it leather? ‘Cause it looks breathable, which is probably great for sweating while crime fighting and all that, but Gotham is the rainiest place I’ve ever seen. Is it waterproof?”

——————————————————————-

They stood and looked at the items spread out across the kitchen table. Agent Michaels quirked a sardonic eyebrow at the “Ollie” engraved on the beer glass but stayed silent. Her fellow agent waved some kind of wand that you might see at airport security above each piece until the wand finally beeped. He was holding it over the concrete. He and Agent Michaels shared a look and then she addressed Oliver. 

“Berlin Wall?”

He nodded. “My dad brought it back right after it came down. He didn’t buy it from a souvenir stand, I know that. Otherwise I don’t know how he got it.”

She skimmed a hand over the top of it, and if you didn’t know she was a secret government agent it would appear she just liked the looks of it. She hefted it in one hand and examined the front, back, and sides before flipping it over. 

Oliver had never done as much, so he hadn’t noticed that the bottom of the chunk was a slightly different color than everything else. He watched her outline the difference with a fingertip and wondered how he’d missed it all these years. She was wearing a tight smile. 

“We’re going to have to take this, Mr Queen. We can probably extract what we need and return what’s left when we’re done, but I can’t guarantee.” She was already turning to hand it off to the other agent who was holding a black backpack open. 

“At least tell me what’s in it.”

“I’m sorry, that’s classified.” She didn’t look sorry. “I can say that there were many things handed off to Americans to bring back to the States during the last days of the Cold War, most of which had tracking beacons imbedded for recovery. This one went dormant on the trip for some reason, and only began relaying again out of the blue a couple of months ago.” She paused to gaze at it disappearing into the backpack like it was a long lost comrade-in-arms. “It just...reached out, for the first time in thirty years.”

Oliver’s brow furrowed into a frown. “So all three break-ins were you?”

“They were all ARGUS, yes.” Agent Michaels tilted her head. “We weren’t expecting you to put up such a fight.” She sounded almost proud. 

“Why the hell didn’t you just ASK for it?”

She looked at him like he had just suggested the dumbest idea ever. 

“How did you get past my security system?” he demanded. 

“We attempted to give it a virus.” The way she said it implied somebody currently sitting behind an ARGUS computer was about to be demoted. “Turns out your IT support is greatly superior to ours. Which is saying something.”

When the chunk of concrete was secured she extended her hand to Oliver and they shook. Then she dropped a hand onto John’s shoulder. 

“Sorry about the tranq, Mr...what did you say your name was?”

“Diggle. John Diggle.”

“Oh, right. The man with the fitness empire, yeah? I’ve seen your picture on the city buses.” Oliver raised an eyebrow; was she flirting? “Well, see you around, Johnny.” She WAS flirting. He glanced at John, who looked startled, and slightly like fresh meat. 

Oliver reached for the front door but she waved him off. 

“We’ll show ourselves out the way we came, thanks. Have a good evening.”

Before they’d taken two steps there was the sound of a knock on the glass balcony door. Oliver had never seen anyone pull a weapon before; it was impressive. With the interior lights on everything out on the balcony was dark, but just as the agents began to stalk forward he yelled for them to hold up. He’d seen a flash of blonde through the window. 

“Overwatch?”

“Felicity Smoak is on the balcony.”

What the... He waved the agents off and strode forward to unlock and slide open the door for his girlfriend, slightly wind-blown and wearing a red cocktail dress that—despite the evening’s adventures and his present company—did all kinds of things to him. 

“Felicity, how...?”

“Trust me, I would love to tell you but I can’t. Ever. And you can’t ever ask me again either, so don’t. What’s going on? Who are these people?” She was speaking faster than his addled brain could process, but in the meantime Agent Michaels spoke up and introduced herself. 

“Oh hey, ARGUS.” Felicity grinned. “I love your satellites.”

She ignored the woman’s quizzical eyebrow and made a beeline for Overwatch’s control panel, leaving the rest of them to stand and gawk at each other. Oliver thought he heard her cooing to the panel. He was sure he heard her use the word “baby”. 

“I guess we’ll be going.” Agent Michaels gave Oliver a brief, uncomfortable smile, one last appraising look at John, and disappeared with the other agent down the hall to his bedroom. 

—————————————————————-

It was almost midnight. Oliver made coffee and the three of them sat hunched around the table while the men relayed their adventure to Felicity. Somewhere in the middle Tommy drunk-dialed Overwatch. To “chat” he said, when Oliver spoke up and asked him what the hell he was doing. He managed to make it over to the apartment in time to hear the end of the story.

Felicity still refused to explain how she ended up on the balcony. 

John offered to get Tommy home in one piece and he gratefully accepted, which told Oliver his best friend must be really wasted if he wasn’t afraid of being alone with John Diggle. It made him smile. 

The man himself clapped a hand onto Oliver’s shoulder as they were heading to the door. 

“You did a good job tonight, keeping your head.”

Oliver blushed under the praise. “I didn’t get to use any fancy moves on him.”

John smiled like a predator. “You gave him a nice nap. That’s all that matters.”

“John, about the other...”

“We’ll talk about it later, Oliver.”

They nodded agreement at that and John herded Tommy out the door. Oliver shut it behind them with a sigh, suddenly bone-achingly tired. He turned to find Felicity leaned back on the couch, eyes closed and legs tucked up under her. He flopped down beside her and stretched an arm out to pull her close.

“Mmmm. That’s nice,” she sighed. 

“Is Overwatch okay?”

Felicity snuggled closer and yawned. “I’ll give her an overhaul tomorrow, electronically speaking, and she’ll be good as new.”

“Stay,” he whispered into her hair, his eyes closing. 

“Can’t. Nothing to wear.”

“What I had in mind doesn’t require clothing.” 

She giggled softly, but he was already scrunching into the corner of the couch and bringing her with. 

“Tell me how you got on my balcony,” he murmured. 

“Never.” It was a sigh. 

He opened his mouth to pester her again but she was already asleep. 

—————————————————————-

Overwatch let William into the apartment without preamble the next morning, which he thought was weird until he saw his dad and Felicity asleep on the couch. He shut the door a little harder than necessary—because yuck—and they stirred. 

“Hey, buddy. You okay? What time is it?”

William shrugged. “After nine, I guess. I forgot about a science project I have to do, so I asked to come home early.” He dropped his backpack in the middle of the floor and crossed the room. 

“Ooo, a science project,” Felicity gushed. “I love science projects. What is it?”

“I have to design something that flies.” He wrinkled his nose. Her eyes lit up. 

“You need help? I have some new—“ she caught herself—“yet safely vague ideas.” 

Oliver shot her a look. William had already moved on; something outside had caught his eye. 

“Hey, what’s that out on the balcony? It looks like luggage.”

Felicity popped up off the couch like a jack in the box and scrambled for the balcony door. “Oh hey, how did that get there? I mean, man, that Starling City airport baggage crew is pretty amazing, huh?”

“Felicity...”

“Nope, I got it. It’s fine. Everything is fine.” Oliver watched her struggle with the bag for a second before shooing her out of the way and picking it up himself. 

“Felicity.”

“Oliver.”

He sighed. 

“Hey, what’s this?” William had spotted a small envelope tucked under the handle on the side of the suitcase. “It’s got your name on it.” He handed it to Oliver.

Oliver studied Felicity’s face, but she was feigning innocence like it was her job. He opened the envelope and studied the inside of the card for a long moment before his eyes flicked to her.

“Felicity, when you were with Wayne, did you two talk about that night at the party by any chance?”

His girlfriend pooched her lips out and shrugged adorably; he handed her the card. It was black and made of high quality paper. There was a large gold-embossed “W” across the front. 

A single sentence—“It wasn’t me.”—in a small, neat script was the only thing written inside.


	14. Chapter 14

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This has been so much fun I kinda hate to be at the end, but here we are. A million billion thank you’s for all the comments—sorry I didn’t get them all answered, but they were all read and cherished. ❤️
> 
> The songs for this chapter are Only Love, by Ben Howard and Coldplay’s Something Just Like This (think end credits). 😉
> 
> The next story’s already in my head. Thank you thank you again! xxxx

“Red. Blue?”

“What about that silver looking one?”

“Hmmm. Eh.” Oliver wrinkled his nose. “I thought you were supposed to be good at this.”

“Me?! What about me screams personal stylist, exactly? Keep in mind I can throw a decent punch.”

Oliver snorted. “Okay, George Foreman.” He waved a hand vaguely at the pile of ties littering his bed. “Even in High School you always looked...put together.”

“That wasn’t me, that was Trevor. You remember him? Dad’s valet? The one he sweet-talked away from some Earl in England or wherever? The threads were all him, man.”

Oliver glanced at Tommy before holding a shirt on a hanger at arm’s length to study it. “You spent most of your time at our house, though.”

“And then I used Raisa. Hey!” He snapped his fingers, but Oliver shook his head. 

“I’m not bothering Raisa with this. Not for a damned tie. I’ll figure it out.”

“You’ve done pretty well with the rest of the day, though.”

It had started with a surprise catered breakfast for Felicity’s entire company—which numbered exactly three, minus John Diggle, but still—then flowers delivered at lunch time. A private car was currently on the way to Felicity’s to chauffeur her to dinner at Table Salt, and there was a hotel room on standby, just in case everything else finally went as planned.

Their track record for successful dates wasn’t great and he wasn’t going to let anything mess up this one, especially a damned tie. 

“What about Overwatch?” Tommy had shoved everything on Oliver’s bed to the side so he could flop down on it. 

“What about her?”

“Maybe she has some ideas.”

“Overwatch?”

“Check your phone, Oliver. I found some images of current trends in men’s fashion.”

Oliver raised a skeptical eyebrow at his best friend as he unlocked his phone. “These could be interesting.”

Actually, they were pretty good.

He tossed the phone to Tommy and headed back into his closet. 

“Ah, blue JACKET. That makes sense. You have one of those?”

The jacket was thrust out of the closet and waggled for confirmation. 

“Perfect.” Tommy sat up and wrung his hands like a super villain. “This is gonna work.”

Ten minutes later Oliver was dressed and checking out the final result one more time in the mirror. 

“You look awesome. She’s gonna be blown away.”

“You’re sure?” Oliver blew out a huge breath. “We’ve been through a lot. And it’s...been awhile.”

“It’s been a week and a half.”

“No, for ME. For...you know.” He tipped his head meaningfully, not wanting to say it out loud. Tommy’s eyes lit with understanding.

“Oh, for THAT. The fact that you haven’t had sex since you were 22, you mean.”

Oliver blushed and glared. Tommy grinned.

“You’ll be fine. It’s like riding a bike.” His face turned serious all of a sudden. “Wait. It still works, right?”

“Yes, it still works, thank you very much.”

Tommy trailed him into the living room where William was sitting with the tv on. 

“You two have everything you need for the night?” Oliver waited for his son to look up and acknowledge him with a nod before he moved to the door. 

“We are all set,” Tommy confirmed. “Overwatch has the take out numbers on speed dial, then we will tackle homework, and we promise to have the dishes done before the dancing girls show up at midnight.” He waggled his eyebrows at Oliver’s brief unimpressed look, but then he sobered. Oliver glanced away and back.

“Hey, thanks for doing this.”

“Anytime. Glad I could help. See you tomorrow, big guy.”

He lived close enough to walk to the restaurant but it was raining, so he used the ride in the car to breathe deeply and try to calm his nerves. It wasn’t like they hadn’t done this before. The dinner part, anyway, Oliver thought as he stared out the window at the rain-soaked streets. They just couldn’t seem to get their dates to go as planned. 

Their alone time had been non-existent over the last week. Felicity had been in Gotham for most of it, setting up Bruce Wayne’s version of Overwatch. She’d not been very forthcoming about her trip except to mention that he had insisted on calling his system Oracle, which Oliver assumed was because Wayne couldn’t stand the thought of having something he’d had first. 

Good, Oliver thought with a grim smile.

His own time had been spent untangling the mess he’d made of the Wilson Circle restoration project. He’d renegotiated with the developer, found an alternate location for the rec center, and been able to add low income housing above it. He had a mind to offer the homeless guy—Eddie—the first unit and give him the job of building security. 

Somewhere in the middle of her own job Felicity had found the time to do some research, and had discovered that while the buildings on John’s street were only a hundred years old, some of their foundations dated back to the Gold Rush days of the 1840s, which was enough to get the ball rolling on making the whole street into a National Historic Landmark. That and the revised development plan would be enough to keep John’s gym safe for the foreseeable future. 

As if she was reading his mind, Liz texted to let him know everything was ready to go and the revised proposal would be voted on by City Council at the end of the week, which meant he could take tomorrow morning off with a clear conscience. 

Oliver sat back against the seat and tried to quiet the sudden butterflies. 

—————————————————————-

They pulled up behind a matching town car and Oliver let out a relieved breath when the driver opened the door and held an umbrella over Felicity Smoak as she got out and stood on the sidewalk. She was wearing another red dress—an even better one—and her hair was pulled back and to the side, kind of fancy. She looked nervous, but she smiled brightly as he got out of his car and jogged forward to get under her umbrella. 

“Oh thank god,” she said immediately, searching his face with wide eyes. 

“What?” His heart rate picked up automatically, because what now?

“You’re here. No burglars, no city-wide emergency...it’s finally going to happen. We’re going to do it.” She shook her head quickly. “And by “it” I mean have dinner, not the other thing we’ll probably be doing tonight if you can make me stop talking, oh god.”

Oliver made a noise under his breath he hoped sounded like a laugh as he took over umbrella duty from the driver and steered her toward the entrance. 

“Sorry,” she squeaked. “I’m nervous.”

“I know. Me too.”

She looked up at him curiously. “What are you nervous about?”

Despite the rain tapping against the umbrella over them Oliver stopped to face her.

“When’s the last time YOU had sex, Ms Smoak?”

“What? Oh, um. Wait.” Her forehead went crinkly. “You don’t really want to know specifically, right? You’re just proving a point.”

“Exactly.” And since he had her there he leaned down and kissed her. 

“Hi,” he whispered.

“Hello.”

“Are you hungry?”

“Starving. After that giant breakfast you provided—thank you, by the way—I had to skip lunch.” She grinned up at him and he felt himself smiling. The butterflies were gone. 

Felicity saw the sign in the lobby first: CLOSED FOR A PRIVATE FUNCTION.

“Oh, frack. Oliver, I knew it. I knew it was too good to be true. I think it’s me. I’m cursed.”

She was already turning into him, her bowed head bumping his chest so that she wasn’t able to see his indulgent smile. 

“You’re not cursed, Felicity,” he assured her gently. 

“How do you know, though?” she whined.

“Because we’re the private function.”

He ran his palms up and down her bare arms until it registered and she looked up at him. 

“We’re...what now?”

He huffed a laugh and gestured into the empty restaurant where the host, two servers, and the chef were waiting. 

“I think when you buy out the place they let you sit wherever you want,” he prompted gently, propelling her forward with a hand at the small of her back. 

Felicity turned once to give him an incredulous look and practically tripped over her own feet. 

“You...bought out the restaurant?!” she hissed as the host pulled out her chair and gestured for her to sit. Oliver waited for him to leave before letting a smug smile play over his face. 

“What’s the use of having all this money if I don’t occasionally spend a little of it?”

“A litt—a LITTLE of it?! Ol-i-VER!” 

His smile widened to a grin. “That’s why we’re here on a Wednesday and not a Saturday, Felicity. It’s fine.” He flipped open his menu. “What looks good?”

——————————————————————-

They spent the time waiting for their food talking about work and speculating about the shenanigans Tommy and William were likely up to. As she’d suspected, Bruce Wayne had offered Felicity a permanent position in his company, but she had softened the blow of turning him down by promising to collaborate on a “special project”, the details of which she claimed were fuzzy. He honestly could’ve sat the entire evening listening to her happy babbling, but as soon as dinner arrived Oliver cleared his throat. 

“Felicity, I need you to know what’s been going on with me the last few weeks, during the run-up to—“ he waved a hand over his Chicken Marsala—“whatever that was in my apartment the other night.” 

Felicity paused with a forkful of salmon near her mouth, her eyes wide, and he chuckled. 

“Don’t let me keep you from eating, but you deserve an explanation for my behavior.”

She set her fork down. “Oliver, I—“

“You need to hear this, Felicity. Please.”

She nodded once and folded her hands together in her lap. 

“I...” He sighed and tried again. “I have never been with a woman that I have truly cared about. I am thirty-four years old and I’ve never been in a serious relationship. For the past twelve years I haven’t been in any kind of relationship with a woman at all. First I was too immature, and then William came along and I didn’t think I could handle being a parent and launching my political career AND putting myself out there that way. I just...I didn’t think it was in the cards for me.” 

He finally realized she was still sitting with her hands in her lap, watching him. “Eat, please. I’ll feel bad if it gets cold.”

Felicity nodded and dug in obediently, so Oliver took a second to cut a bite for himself. A giant swig of wine wouldn’t hurt either, probably. He swallowed it down and continued. 

“And then you walked into my apartment—or, I called your company—and you changed everything. Suddenly I had someone to talk to at the end of the day. I had a reason to look forward to a dinner out, or a cuddle on the couch, or a walk in the park. You’ve reached a part of my son that I haven’t been able to since his mother died, and I will forever be grateful for that. You’re just...you’re remarkable.”

She’d made some headway into her entree, but at his praise she set her fork down very carefully on the side of her plate.

“So, why did you pull away?” She was watching him very carefully. “Because you did pull away, didn’t you?”

Oliver sighed. “I started having nightmares. About you.” He shook his head quickly. “I had them every night. It was always someone breaking into the apartment and hurting you, and I couldn’t stop them and I couldn’t tell myself that it was just my overactive imagination trying to convince me that us being together was somehow bad for you.”

“That you didn’t deserve to be happy, you mean.”

Her words brought him up short. So did the look of understanding on her face. 

“Yeah. I guess so.”

She reached across the table for his hand. “Oliver, I could’ve helped. With the nightmares.”

“No.” He shook his head again but squeezed her hand. “I didn’t want you to see me like that.”

Felicity smiled softly. Her fingers began to caress his palm lightly, just shy of a tickle. “Well, I’m hoping to see all of you, Oliver Queen, and not just the super sexy parts.” She waited for him to look at her—blush and all—before she went on. “So if we’re going to move forward, it has to be together. We have to be a team. And I can’t be a good teammate if I don’t know what’s going on with you. Okay?”

For a panicked second Oliver thought he might cry, but he swallowed the feeling down and nodded. If she saw his struggle, she let it go. 

“Okay.” She grinned as she released his hand in favor of her fork. “That’s settled. Now. We should eat so we have time to let our food digest before all the sex happens.”

Oliver nearly choked on his bite. 

——————————————————————

They split a piece of cheesecake for dessert; the chef insisted on sending the rest of it home with them in a bakery box, so Oliver placed it in the backseat of the car that had brought him with orders that it be delivered straight to his apartment for William and Tommy. Then he got in to Felicity’s car and hugged her close. 

The rain had ended during dinner, leaving behind a light breeze and the scent of rain. He asked the driver to take them to the underground parking garage of Queen Consolidated, then he badged them into the executive elevator and took her to the observation deck on the roof. 

Felicity’s breath caught as they stepped out the door. “I didn’t know there was a garden up here!” She pulled on his hand unconsciously, taking in the neat gravel path between rectangles of lush green grass and fruit trees. White outdoor lights crisscrossed the space, and the puddles under their feet shimmered with their reflection. They were so high up the sound of the traffic below was barely noticeable. 

Oliver chuckled. “Hardly anybody does. It’s QC’s best kept secret.”

They strolled hand in hand to the far side of the roof; Felicity let go long enough to put her hands on the wall and raise up on her tiptoes to try to get a look over at the world below. Oliver’s light touch on her arm brought her back to him. 

“Felicity, even with the break-ins, and the nightmares, and—“ he huffed a laugh and she smiled—“the personal trainer from hell, these past few weeks have been some of the best of my entire life. And that’s all because of you. After seeing you with William I am 100 percent sure that, if you want, his life will be better with you in it. Just like mine.” Oliver pulled her into his arms. “I love you.”

She wound her arms around his neck and guided him down for a kiss that answered every question he’d ever had. 

——————————————————————-

They stayed that way on the roof until he felt her shiver from the breeze. “I have a hotel room waiting, in case you liked my speech,” he whispered. 

Felicity hummed in contentment. “It was a good speech.”

“Yeah?”

“Yes.” She drew out the “ess” at the end. “And a hotel room sounds like a great idea. Much less complicated than your apartment, currently.”

Oliver grinned. “I’m not quite ready to have THE TALK with William. Or Overwatch,” he added, which made her laugh. She kissed him again softly. 

“It’s possible I didn’t think the cameras-in-the-bedroom part all the way through in development. But that will be my next project. After tonight's project, I mean.”

Oliver leaned back enough to give her an amused look. “I’m a project now?”

She tipped her head playfully. “I need to prove you’re not as rusty as you think, Mr Queen.” She wet her lips with her tongue and his eyes dropped to watch.

“Then I guess we should be going.”

————————————————————————

The hotel room was quite nice, but Oliver knew he would never remember it. What he never forgot about that night was Felicity’s playfulness, and her quiet confidence, and the feeling that he was somehow doing all of this for the first time but doing it very, very well. 

Afterward, untangled from the sheets but still tangled together, they talked about the future. He confessed his dream to one day serve in Congress and she speculated that there were probably plenty of Washington DC mansions that could use a version of Overwatch. 

“We don’t have to figure it all out tonight,” Oliver finally yawned. Felicity nodded agreement against his chest before hiking herself up on an elbow and floundering over him to snag her phone from the nightstand beside his shoulder. His brow knit in concern.

“What are you doing? I thought we were taking tomorrow morning off.”

“We are.” She grinned wickedly. “I’m setting an alarm so we have time to do this—“ she waved her hand over both of them in illustration—“again in the morning.”

Sleep was suddenly the last thing on Oliver’s mind. He gently wrestled the phone from her grip and set it back down before trailing his fingers up her arm to her shoulder. 

“Who says we need to wait til morning?”

He flipped them and smothered her giggles with kisses.

———————————————————————

“Better. That was much better. You’re much more fluid today; you been doing yoga?”

Oliver glanced beyond John Diggle’s shoulder at the blonde sweating buckets on a stationary bike across the room and couldn’t contain his brief grin. “Kinda.”

“Well keep it up.” He slapped the mayor on his shoulder. They reached for their water bottles at the same time, but Oliver sensed eyes on him and glanced back at his trainer. 

“I should’ve said this sooner, but thanks.”

Oliver tipped his head to the side briefly, confused.

“For what?”

“For that night in your apartment.” John took a swig from his water bottle. “And for fixing those plans. You didn’t have to change anything, but you did. And this Historic Register thing?” He waved his hand around expressively while his eyes traveled the perimeter of the second floor. “It’s going to really save this place.”

“Believe me, John, it was the least I could do. To make up for everything.” He shrugged, letting the pause emphasize his feelings, and not finding a better way to reiterate it. “For everything.”

John stared at him for another moment and then his mouth widened into a slow smile. 

“Didn’t I tell you to call me Diggle?”

 

SIX MONTHS LATER

“Felicity Smoak is at the door.”

Oliver spun from his spot in front of the kitchen sink.

“What? No, Overwatch, don’t—“

But she was already wrestling a large plastic box on wheels through his front door. 

“I said no, Overwatch, why did you do that?”

He could practically hear the security system shrug. “She’s on the list.” 

Oliver huffed a sigh. 

“You can’t be here. We’re not supposed to see—“

Her small hand waved him away. “You sound like my mother, Oliver. That’s just superstition. Anyway, it’s Upgrade Day!” Felicity’s hands shot into the air as she made Spirit Fingers. 

“Today?” Oliver was incredulous. “You have nothing better to do...today?”

“It won’t take long. You’ve complained for months about how confusing it is that we sound exactly alike. And that voice actor dude FINALLY finished his work.” She shook her head as she rummaged through the box. “Nice guy, but he was ALWAYS late, and every time he made a mistake he wanted a complete do-over. Sheesh.”

She tossed a stack of papers onto his kitchen table and Oliver tilted his head to get a look. He’d hardly finished the first line before Felicity lunged in front of him and covered the papers with both hands.

“What are you doing?! Don’t you know it’s bad luck to see the software before it’s installed?”

He considered pointing out the irony, but pulled his lips in and managed to hold his peace. “Okay, well, if you don’t need me I have to get ready. For, you know, LATER.”

She flipped a hand at him in answer, already humming to herself as she opened Overwatch’s access panel. 

——————————————————————

He was stepping out of the shower when he heard the male voice drifting down the hall from his living room. He slung a towel around his waist and went to investigate. 

Felicity’s eyes widened in appreciation when she saw him, and Oliver had the sudden urge to check the time and see if they couldn’t squeeze one extra activity into their busy day. But before he could suggest it she grinned at him. 

“Overwatch, say hello.”

“Hi Mr Queen.” It was the male voice he’d heard from his bathroom; youngish, chipper, clearly eager to please. 

“Hello Overwatch. Call me Oliver.”

“Okay, Oliver. Can I call you Ollie?”

He shot Felicity a look. “Um, no. You may not.”

“Yes, Oliver.” 

Oliver’s eyebrows were somewhere near his hairline; he could swear he’d heard disappointment in that voice.

“Who’d you say this guy was?” he muttered through gritted teeth. 

“Barry. Barry Allen? He came highly recommended. Everybody seems to love him.” She paused with her mouth in a cute little ‘Oh’. “You don’t?”

His brows dropped to form a frown. If he said no he’d run the risk of hurting her feelings, and—maybe more importantly, today of all days—she’d insist on reversing her work, which would slow them down even further. 

“You know what? I’ll give him a chance, okay?” He was already guiding her back to her plastic box on wheels. “You can leave that here, to save you time. ‘Cause I’m pretty sure you have somewhere else you need to be right now.” He was trying oh-so hard to be patient, but he really needed her to get the hint and get out.

“Oh, frack! Is that the time?! I gotta go!”

“Yes. Yes you do.” He held the door open with one hand and guided her with the other. “Felicity?”

“Yes Oliver?”

“I’ll see you soon?”

She turned back, her eyes wide, and nodded like she’d finally remembered what day it was. About damn time. 

“Hey. I love you.”

Her gorgeous smile brightened the whole hallway. “I love you too.” She waggled a hand in the air. “Be nice to—“

“Larry. Got it. I will.”

“It’s Barry.”

“Whatever.”

He managed to close the door gently.

———————————————————————

A billionaire mayor didn’t get to have a small wedding, that was just the way it had to be. But after—after the giant engagement party, the multiple showers, the bachelor weekend in Vegas, the ceremony that used every inch of space in the hotel ballroom, and the lavish sit down meal at the reception, Felicity snuck off to change from her designer princess ball gown into a simple white slip dress and they disappeared into the night in the back of a limousine. 

William had been kissed and hugged within an inch of his life and handed over to his grandparents for the week, and Donna Smoak was happily flirting with the Chief of Starling City police at the reception that was still in full swing. Felicity dropped her head onto her husband’s shoulder with a happy sigh as he gazed at their entwined hands. 

“One more stop, and then Aruba.”

Oliver hummed agreement as he pressed a kiss to her temple. 

“Hey, I don’t know how I missed it before, but I noticed while I was working on Overwatch today the thing you do with the clocks every morning. Setting them ten minutes fast so you’re not late? That’s really clever.”

“Ten minutes...? I didn’t...” Oliver’s mouth fell open. Overwatch. All these months that he and William had been congratulating themselves on finally getting their morning routine nailed down she’d been messing with the clocks. Son of a...

He grinned into the darkness. 

The gym was lit up; they could hear a bass line thumping before they’d even opened the door and clambered out into the cool night air. John was waiting at the entrance, still in his groomsman’s tux, and he was smiling. 

“What, no Tommy?”

Oliver chuckled. “He was in a target-rich environment. His words, not mine.”

It wasn’t a big crowd, mostly neighborhood folks and fellow gym members. Rene was there, talking to Eddie, and Felicity’s spin class instructor—practically unrecognizable in clothing that wasn’t spandex—was standing by to hand them each a bottle of beer. There was a DJ upstairs and tables full of international finger foods made by ladies who lived in Wilson Circle and were eager to spoil their handsome mayor and his new wife.

They greeted everyone and then stood with Diggle, who kept checking his phone like it was a newborn baby. Oliver finally lifted his chin at it in question. John looked sheepish.

“Lyla said she might drop by.”

From her spot held protectively against his side, Felicity’s arm tightened around Oliver’s waist to relay her excitement. They knew the ARGUS Agent had been in contact with him but they hadn’t seen them together yet. 

“So that’s...going well?” Oliver tried to sound nonchalant. 

“Yeah.” 

Was he blushing? John Diggle was blushing.  
Luckily he and Felicity had already had time to process the idea that the woman who’d shot their friend with a tranquilizer dart had later called to ask him out; Felicity didn’t even giggle. 

———————————————————————

Despite being one of the guests of honor, Oliver managed to get a moment to himself; he stood at the top of the stairs, jacket discarded and bow tie undone, and watched his bride laughing with John and Lyla across the room. 

He slipped away to the deserted first floor and leaned against the wall toward the back of the building, near the heavy bags. 

That’s where Felicity found him a bit later. 

“I saw you sneak away.” She tipped her head when he glanced up at her. “You want me to give you a minute? Today’s been a lot.”

He smiled gently and held out a hand for her, so she snuggled into his side and he hugged her close. 

“I was just thinking about William.”

“Yeah. I’m gonna miss him this next week.”

Oliver nodded. “Well that, certainly. But...”

He sighed without finishing and she looked up at him. 

“He just turned thirteen, but it feels like he was a toddler a week ago. It’s all going so fast.”

Felicity gave him a gentle squeeze. “You sound worried.”

“There’s just...so much. So much I feel like we still need to teach him, and there’s so much stuff he’s going to go through in the next few years. I’m not...I’m not sure I can do it right.”

“You’re afraid he’s going to be like you as a teenager, is that it?”

Oliver frowned, but nodded.

“First of all, I’m pretty sure John Diggle is not going to let that happen.”

He laughed at that and she grinned. “Besides, he hasn’t grown up with nearly as much wealth and privilege as you had. You’ve made sure of that.” She shifted to face him and pressed her body against his, leaning in. “You have been a constant presence in his life, Oliver. He knows that you prioritize him and that you care what he does. Most importantly, he sees you. He sees you caring for other people more than yourself. He’s going to be fine.”

Oliver nodded softly and wrapped his arms around his bride. 

“You’re sure?” he whispered. 

Felicity pressed up on her toes to give him a kiss. “I’m positive.”

“You two love birds have time to see your last wedding present?”

John was at the bottom of the stairs wearing a mildly amused expression. Oliver gave them both a beleaguered sigh. 

“I almost forgot.”

The first booms and crackles could already be heard outside. John waved them on. 

“You’re late. Everybody else is already on the roof.”

“I can’t believe I’m about to watch fireworks courtesy of Bruce Wayne on my wedding day,” Oliver mused as they jogged up the stairs together. Felicity snorted. 

“Bet you never thought you’d say that sentence. To be fair, he’s not doing it for you.”

John grinned as he held the door to the roof stairs open for them. 

“You ever gonna tell me what you’re doing on your tablet when you’re on the phone with that guy late into the night?” Oliver asked his wife.

“How many times are we going to have this conversation? I can’t talk about it.”

He shot a look at John over her head. “You should hear them. They sound like they’re playing superheroes.”

“You’re just jealous.”

The noise of fireworks exploding drowned out Diggle’s laugh and Oliver’s reply.


End file.
